An unofficial Notepad++ port finally landed on Mac. Don Ho didn't write it.

Notepad++ now has a Mac build, but Don Ho didn’t write it. A separate developer, Andrey Letov, has been maintaining a fork that swaps the original Win32 UI for a native Cocoa shell, ships as a universal binary, and runs the same Scintilla editor under the hood. MacRumors picked it up on April 29.

The “20 years later” framing in the headlines is the part to clarify. Don Ho has not changed his stance on a Mac port; the official Notepad++ project remains Windows-only by design. What changed is that an outside developer carried the GPL code far enough to give Mac users a native build that behaves like the Windows version, even if it doesn’t fully behave like a Mac app. That distinction matters if you’re tempted to file bug reports upstream.

What’s actually shipping

The download lives at notepad-plus-plus-mac.org. It’s a universal binary, so the same package runs on Apple Silicon and Intel hardware. Andrey Letov reports building the UI in Objective-C++ Cocoa to replace the original Win32 layer. The editing core is unchanged, so the experience underneath the chrome should feel identical to a long-time Windows user.

What’s in the box, in order of how often you’ll touch it:

• Scintilla editor. Same engine that powers the Windows build, the same engine you’ll find in SciTE and a long list of other editors. Indentation, code folding, bracket matching, and incremental search all behave the way Notepad++ users expect.
• Syntax highlighting for 80+ languages. Lexers ship with the distribution, no plugin installs needed for the common languages.
• Tabbed editing, find/replace across files, macro recording. Power-user features that pushed Notepad++ to its install base in the first place.
• Plugin support. The plugin ABI is preserved, which is the bigger surprise; if a plugin compiled for the Windows build can be adapted, the door is open.
• Cost. Free, GPL, no ads, no subscription.

What it is not

It’s not an Apple-flavored editor. Not even close. One commenter on MacRumors put it bluntly: the GUI “feels totally off on MacOS”, with the settings dialog hung off the menu bar instead of the standard application-menu position. Keyboard shortcuts mirror the Win32 set, which means muscle memory borrowed from any other Mac editor will misfire. The fastest way to confirm whether you’ll like it is to install it and open the same five files you opened in your last editor.

It’s not endorsed by Don Ho or the upstream project. The GPL gives Andrey Letov the right to ship the fork, and the project is honest about being a community effort. But the trademark, the website you’ve bookmarked since the Windows XP era, and the official release notes all stay with the upstream Notepad++. If you find a bug that exists on both platforms, file it upstream. If you find a Mac-only one, the right place is whatever issue tracker the port maintains.

It’s also not the only “Notepad++ on Mac” path that has existed. Wine, CrossOver, and a ten-year stack of partial alternatives have served the same audience. The new wrapper-free build is the one most users will reach for, but it’s worth knowing that this is the third or fourth attempt at this problem, and the previous attempts mostly stalled when the maintainer ran out of energy.

What this means for you

If you’re a Windows-to-Mac switcher who never quite trusted any of the other editors, install it and decide for yourself in a single afternoon. The cost of trying is zero, the cost of giving up is closing the app, and the cost of staying is muscle memory you already have.

If you’re a Mac native who’s never used Notepad++, this isn’t your editor. Skip it. Sublime Text, BBEdit, Zed, and VS Code all behave more like Mac apps than this port does, and the value of Notepad++ on macOS lives in the familiarity, not the experience.

If you’re an open-source maintainer, watch what happens to this port over the next year. A solo developer carrying a Win32-shaped codebase to native macOS while keeping plugin compatibility is the kind of project that lives or dies on whether anyone funds it. There’s no Patreon link on the site yet. If the project sticks, that’s the next thing to watch.