Notepad++ is one of the most popular free replacement for your default Microsoft Notepad application. Supports much more features and options like syntax highlight, auto-completion, tab support, multi-language interface and much much more. All of that, and even more you’ll get completely for free.
This is the much better alternative replacement than default MS Notepad – which practically can only read and save files. Nothing else more, making it not useful for most users, specially for the programmers.
User Interface and Functions
The user interface is very simple and intuitive. You’ll get used of it very easily. The first thing you should notice is the nice interface, much nicer than with the default Notepad in Windows.
You see that this application supports multiple tabs – which is very useful if you tend to open and work on more documents at once. Very practical and useful add-on indeed, and it works just fine.

Notepad++ multi-tab support
User interface is available in the multiple languages. Right now, it’s translated into 48 world languages, making it an ideal replacements for the people which doesn’t speak English language.
Notepad++ allows easy syntax highlight and folding. With unbelievable support for many languages including C++, HTML, PHP, ASP, JavaScript, XML, SQL, Python, Perl, Matlab and much others.
It allows user to define his own language : not only the syntax highlighting keywords, but also the syntax folding keywords, comment keywords and the operators.
For most supported languages, user can make his/her own API list. Once the api file is ready, type Ctrl+Space to see the simple and attractive auto-complete function. This may be very helpful and useful for most users.

JavaScript code highlight in Notepad++

Auto Complete source code in the Notepad++
On this application, one more thing I like very much is the bookmarking system. You can easily bookmark any document line you want to find it later quickly. Very useful for most users, specially for the programmers and web developers.

Notepad Bookmarks support
Final Thoughts
The above mentioned features and options are the just basic ones. Notepad++ supports much more functions than above ones and that’s the real beauty of this application.
Since many features and options are included, it’s surprisingly fast and very effective. If you want an application which is very good for programming, this is the application for you. And of course, it’s completely free! Download it completely for free from the below link.
Notepad++ (2.7 MiB, 92 hits)
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