A clean Mac notepad for people who want to write things down without launching a word processor or installing a code editor.
Why NotepadX?
TextEdit is fine for a quick scribble but it doesn't know what a .swift or .py file is, has no tabs, and can't preview markdown. VS Code can do everything β and asks you to manage workspaces, install extensions, and accept a sidebar full of things you didn't ask for. There's a quiet gap in the middle.
NotepadX fills it. It opens in under a second, restores the tabs you had last time, and treats whatever you type as a first-class document β code, markdown, plain text, all the same.
What it does?
β’ Tabs that remember. Every tab is its own document with its own scroll position and cursor. Closing the app doesn't lose your place.
β’ Real syntax highlighting for the languages you actually use β Swift, Rust, Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Go, Ruby, Java, Kotlin, C/C++, JSON, YAML, HTML, CSS, SQL, and more. Colours match VS Code so anything you copy out still looks right.
β’ Live markdown preview. Open a .md file and a rendered preview appears alongside the source. Tables, task lists, code blocks, links, blockquotes β full GFM. Switch the theme and both panes follow.
β’ Find that highlights everything. βF opens an Apple-style sheet with a match count, Match Case toggle, and yellow highlights painted on every occurrence in the editor. The current match shows in blue. Just like a browser.
β’ Smart paired brackets. Type (, [, {, ", or ` β the closing character is there. Select text first to wrap it. Backspace inside an empty pair clears both halves.
β’ Print and export. Print, Print Preview, or export markdown to PDF, Word (.rtf), or plain text. Plain-text export strips markdown markup cleanly.
β’ The small things. Auto-trim trailing whitespace on save, external file-change detection with "Keep Mine" / "Reload from Disk", Recent Files menu, word wrap toggle, β+/β- zoom, light and dark themes, line numbers, the modified-dot on the tab.
What it isn't?
Not a word processor β there's no bold/italic toolbar; use markdown if you want formatting. Not a code IDE β no autocomplete, no language servers, no debugger. Not a notes app β no tags, no notebooks, no graph view. Files go where you put them.
The simplest place that knows how to highlight Python and render a markdown table.
