You can start the plugin manager of Notepad++ the following way. Start the text editor and then open Plugins > Plugin Manager > Show Plugin Manager on the menubar.

All stable plugins are now displayed in a table like interface. You can display unstable plugins with a click on Settings and the selection of “show unstable plugins” in the new window there.

Plugins are listed with their name, category, version and stability there. A description is displayed below the table when you select one of the plugins in the list. You install plugins by selecting them first (place a checkmark in their box) and then the Install button in the Plugin Manager interface.

The plugin will be downloaded from the Internet and installed automatically. It may be necessary to let the program close and re-open itself to complete the plugin installation.

An alternative to the process described here is to download and install plugins manually. You find a list of Notepad++ plugins on the official Sourceforge project page. All you need to do is to download the plugins there, unpack them and place the dlls into the Notepad plugin directory. The site lists additional plugins that are not available in the plugin manager.

Notepad++ checks for compatibility on every startup. You may receive a message that one or multiple plugins that you have installed manually are not compatible with the installed version of Notepad++ on the system.

I suggest you make sure that you run the latest version of the program before you install any plugins. You can do that from within the application. Click on the question mark in the menubar and select Update Notepad++ from the menu there to run an update.

Notepad++ Plugins

Change Markers

This plugin tracks changes made to documents, and enables navigation between changes, with a distinction being made between saved and unsaved changes. The change indicator is either a bar in the left margin or a specific highlighting.

CSS-Explorer

CSS-eXplorer is a CSS and HTML plug-in for Notepad++. It allows easy navigation and edit of CSS files with Notepad++. Main features:

TreeView: Allows easy navigation in CSS file.
Validation Service: Check errors in CSS file, and provide detailed report.
Web Page Preview: Test your work on CSS file immediately via HTML Web Page Preview Window.
CSS Editor: Add new parameters and design options to CSS file quickly and easily (support CSS 2.0 defines).

Function List

Function list offers a list of functions (or sections) according of the language of current document, in order to access to the function or section you need quickly.

Multi Clipboard

MultiClipboard plugin implements multiple (10) text buffers that is filled up via copying and/or cutting of text.

To paste any text from the buffers, use Ctrl-V or middle mouse click (normal paste):
to paste the most recently copied/cut text Ctrl-Shift-V or Shift-middle mouse click:
to pop up a menu with the text buffer entries. Select the desired menu item to paste it

RegEx Helper

A Notepad++ plugin that allows users to develop regular expressions and test them against their open documents

This is only a small selection of Notepad++ plugins. I have tested them with the latest version of the text editor (Notepad++ 5.9.6.2 at the time of writing).

Are you making use of Notepad++ plugins? If so, which plugins are installed on your system?

We have covered Notepad++ plugins in the past which can be really helpful under certain circumstances. One of the most useful plugins for users who work with Notepad++ regularly is the Autosave plugin.

The plugin can be downloaded from the developer’s website. It needs to be extracted into the plugins folder of the Notepad++ installation (the folder might need to be created if this is the first plugin).

The new autosave option becomes available after the next program start once the two files have been placed in the plugins folders.

Autosave can be configured to automatically save documents if the application loses focus or at time intervals with the default interval set to one minute. It is furthermore possible to only save the current document or only named ones so that these temp documents that some users like to create do not get saved on the computer system.

UltraEdit is a text editor at its core and one could mistakenly think of it as yet another Notepad clone. While it still provides the speed of the default Windows text editor it comes with an impressive feature list that beats most – if not all – other text editors in Windows fair and square. Yes, that includes Notepad++ and the likes. That’s of course only true if you need the additional features that it provides. The feature list includes syntax highlighting, code folding, Unicode support, spell checking, ftp & sftp browser, ssh. macro engine, html building and customizations among others.

The editor provides professionals with the tools needed in their job. Webmasters and web designers who do use text editors and not a web designing software will find the features offered indispensable. UltraEdit provides syntax highlighting for web standards such as html, php, xml, javascript or css including a html file validator that checks if the code is W3C compliant. More than 500 wordfiles can be downloaded from the official homepage to add support for additional programming languages from Assembly languages to C++ and World of Warcraft Lua. The integrated ftp & sftp browser makes updating files on the Internet a breeze. Add to that a dockable SSH / Telnet window to access a remote server command line right from the editor.

Versioned backups ensure worry free editing as files can be backed up before changes are committed to them. A file comparison tool can be used to compare different versions of a file to highlight the differences.

Additional UltraEdit features include:

• Configure word wrap and tab settings for different file types
• Organize and access local or FTP files with projects.
• Hex, Unicode, Large Files support
• Integrated Scripting Engine
• Customize nearly every aspect of the editor
• WebSearch Toolbar (Wikipedia, PHP.net, MSDN..)

UltraCompare is a powerful file comparison tool that can compare files and folders with each other. Two or three binary and text files can be compared with each other at the same time and it is possible to merge the differences of the compared files. The folder mode supports both local and network directories and jar / zip file comparison. It also offers the means to merge the differences between compared directories.

The interface will display the text files that are compared visually highlighting the differences. Tabbed sessions allow to run multiple comparisons at the same time int he same window. The folder compare displays the folder structures next to each other using symbols and colors to highlight the differences.

Additional UltraCompare Features include:

• Differences navigation
• Multiple merge options
• Relational lines
• Isolate lines
• File Editing
• File Compare Profiles

You can grab a copy of UltraEdit or UltraCompare by leaving a comment below. Tell us what you currently use for file editing and text comparison.

Disabling sessions from Notepad++ should not have any impact on other software features like the tabbed interface. The option to disable sessions in Notepad++ can be found in the options of the software program.

A user opening Notepad++ can open the program’s options by selecting Settings from the main menu and Preferences from the submenu. The Preferences window is opening which is displaying several tabs and lots of options.

Locate the Misc tab of the Preferences menu and uncheck the “Remember the current session for next launch” box to disable the session feature in Notepad++.The user will only see the current document the next time Notepad++ is opened. New documents are still added in tabs during a session but once Notepad++ gets closed the information are erased.

Adding plugins is a breeze. Notepad++ comes with a plugin folder that is a subdirectory of the root directory of the installation. Just place all downloaded plugins into that directory and they will automatically be recognized by Notepad++. If the plugin directory is not existing create it. The plugins can be configured from within Notepad++ by clicking on the Plugins menu in the toolbar.

The removal process works the same way, just delete files in the plugin directory to remove a plugin that you do not want to use anymore.

The main plugin page lists 26 plugins for the latest version of Notepad++. Here are the ones that I found useful and decided to install:

• XML Tools – XML Checker. Can auto-close tags and provides other useful features.
• Hex Editor – adds a Hex Editor to Notepad++
• Compare Plugin – compare two text files.
• FTP Synchronize – modify and upload files directly to a ftp server.
• Multi Clipboard – add up to ten text phrases to the clipboard.
• Windows Manager – great if you work with many open windows at once regularly.

Those are just five of the 26 available plugins. Most have been written for special purposes and are probably not useful to the majority of users.

Notepad++ can basically be used as a replacement for the standard Windows text editor Notepad, that’s good for editing and writing basic texts, but not so good anymore when it comes to larger texts or code. Notepad++ has been designed for web developers and software developers, as well as other users who need a fast loading text editor with advanced capabilities.

Besides syntax highlighting, which is one of the core features of Notepad++, users can make use of macros, a plugin system, command line options or session management, all of which is not available in the standard text editor Notepad.

Best of all, Notepad++ does not sacrifice speed to offer the features. You will notice no speed difference between the text editor and the default Windows editor.

Lets talk for a second about session management. Unlike Notepad, which forgets what has been opened once you close the program, Notepad++ remembers sessions and you can continue working on the text files that have been open in previous sessions. If you do not like that particular feature, you can disable it easily on the extensive program options.

Plugins need to be mentioned briefly as well. They extend the functionality of the text editor. A list of plugins is accessible here at Sourceforge. Among them plugins to automatically save texts, a ColdFusion plugin, Color Picker, Comparison plugin or a plugin to minimize JavaScript.

Notepad++ is an excellent program for Windows users who want better functionality than what the standard text editor Notepad has to offer.