Notepad Studio

A lightweight, cross-platform text editor inspired by Notepad++, written in Rust. Notepad++ feel, AI features optional, no bloat.

Status: v0.1.0 effectively complete + Beyond section shipped. Word wrap

• horizontal scrollbar, show whitespace, full-screen (F11), bracket matching, auto-indent, syntax-aware comment toggle (24 langs), drop-to-open, recent files, tab drag-reorder, per-window placement persistence, multi-click selection (word/line/all), per-buffer EOL + encoding toggles, Replace All single-undo, user-customisable Shortcut Mapper, in-window right-click context menu, column/multi-cursor edit, macro record / replay, plugin host, session restore, and large-file streaming reads have all landed. Currently in flight: Notepad++-style tab right-click context menu.

Goals

• Lightweight — small binary, fast cold start, low memory.
• Cross-platform — macOS, Linux, Windows.
• Familiar — Notepad++-style UX: tabs, find/replace, encoding/EOL toggles, syntax highlighting, plugin-friendly.
• Open source — Apache-2.0.

Built with

• gpui — the GPU-accelerated UI framework from Zed Industries (Apache-2.0). Notepad Studio uses gpui as a UI library; all editor logic, layout, buffer handling, file I/O, and UX are original to this project.
• ropey — rope data structure for the text buffer.
• rfd — native file dialogs.
• regex — find/replace engine (literal escape, whole-word \b, and full regex modes).
• dirs — platform-correct config / log paths.
• serde + toml — settings persistence.

Platform support

Platform	Status	Notes
macOS	tested daily	Native menu bar, dock-icon reopen, traffic-light position. Default line ending: LF.
Linux	builds	X11 / Wayland via gpui's defaults. Default line ending: LF. Last-window-close exits the app.
Windows	builds	Default line ending: CRLF. Last-window-close exits the app. File ▸ Exit and Alt+F4 both work.

Keybindings register Cmd-* and Ctrl-* variants together so the same source builds across all three platforms — only the active modifier fires per OS. Word-jump also accepts Alt-arrow (macOS convention) alongside Ctrl-arrow (Notepad++). Crash reports land in ~/Library/Logs/Notepad Studio/panic.log (macOS), $XDG_STATE_HOME/Notepad Studio/panic.log (Linux), or %LOCALAPPDATA%\Notepad Studio\Logs\panic.log (Windows).

Installing a release

Download a prebuilt binary from the Releases page. Each release ships one artifact per platform:

Platform	Artifact	Contents
macOS (Apple Silicon)	Notepad-Studio-macos-arm64.zip	Notepad Studio.app
macOS (Intel)	Notepad-Studio-macos-x86_64.zip	Notepad Studio.app
Linux x86_64	Notepad-Studio-linux-x86_64.tar.gz	notepad-studio binary
Windows x86_64	Notepad-Studio-windows-x86_64.zip	notepad-studio.exe

All assets (icons, themes) are embedded in the binary, so the Linux and Windows artifacts are just the standalone executable — no extra files to keep alongside it.

macOS Gatekeeper note: the .app is not signed or notarized yet, so the first launch is blocked by Gatekeeper. Either right-click the app → Open (then confirm once), or clear the quarantine flag after moving it to /Applications:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/Notepad Studio.app"

Build & run

cargo build            # debug build
cargo run              # build + run (debug)
cargo build --release  # optimised build
cargo run --release    # build + run (optimised)
cargo check            # type-check only, no binary

gpui is vendored in-repo under vendor/gpui, so the project is fully self-contained — nothing is fetched or downloaded for it. The first build compiles the vendored gpui from source (a few minutes); subsequent builds are fast.

Release builds (cargo bundle) carry the app icon automatically. Regenerating icons from new source art → docs/icons.md.

Roadmap

v0.0.1 — scaffold ✅

• Window opens, native menu bar, dark theme, status bar
• Stubbed actions (File / Edit / View / Help)
• Rope-backed read-only buffer renders line-by-line with gutter

v0.0.2 — selection & themes ✅

• Custom EditorElement with shaped lines and selection paint
• Click + drag to select; shift-click to extend selection
• Cmd/Ctrl-A select all, Cmd/Ctrl-C copy via system clipboard
• FocusHandle, key context, IBeam cursor over the editor
• Light + Dark theme with View ▸ Toggle Theme (Cmd/Ctrl-Shift-T)

v0.0.3 — editable buffer ✅

• EntityInputHandler — OS / IME text routes into the rope buffer
• Backspace, Delete, Enter, Tab (4 spaces, configurable)
• Arrow keys, Home/End, Cmd+Home/End, Cmd+Up/Down for doc bounds
• Alt+Left/Right and Ctrl+Left/Right for word boundaries
• Shift-extend variants on every movement
• Sticky desired column for vertical movement
• Caret blinks every 500ms via gpui::Timer task; resets on activity
• Cut (Cmd+X), Paste (Cmd+V) wired to system clipboard
• Linear undo / redo stacks (Cmd+Z, Cmd+Shift+Z, Ctrl+Y)
• Dirty bit reflected in the title bar (● prefix)

v0.0.3 — cross-platform polish ✅

• Mouse drag keeps selecting when the cursor leaves the window
• File ▸ New Window (Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+N) and macOS dock-icon reopen
• Ctrl- variants for every Cmd- chord; Linux/Windows-friendly defaults
• QuitMode::Default — macOS stays alive on last window close, Linux/Windows exit
• File ▸ Exit menu entry alongside the macOS Quit
• OS-aware line endings — CRLF default on Windows, LF elsewhere
• Panic hook writes timestamped reports to a platform-correct log dir
• Window placement persisted to <config>/Notepad Studio/window.toml

v0.0.4 — file I/O & tabs ✅

• Multi-tab buffers — switchable buffers in one window with a top tab strip
• Cmd/Ctrl-N opens a new empty tab; Cmd/Ctrl-W closes the active tab
• Ctrl-Tab / Ctrl-Shift-Tab cycle tabs (MRU order, MRU tracking deferred)
• Ctrl-PageDown / Ctrl-PageUp cycle tabs in visual order
• Cmd/Ctrl-1..Cmd/Ctrl-9 jump directly to tab N
• Cmd/Ctrl-Shift-W closes every tab; one fresh blank tab is left behind
• Cmd/Ctrl-Shift-T restores the most recently closed tab (last 20)
• Closing the last tab in a window closes the window
• Theme toggle moved to menu only (free for Notepad++ parity)
• File ▸ Open via rfd — loads into the active empty tab or a new tab, detects LF / CRLF / CR
• File ▸ Save (Cmd/Ctrl-S) and Save As (Cmd-Shift-S mac, Ctrl-Alt-S Linux/Win)
• File ▸ Save All (Cmd-Opt-S mac, Ctrl-Shift-S Linux/Win)
• Dirty-prompt on close-tab and Close All — Save / Don't Save / Cancel
• Window title and tab strip sync to active tab's file path and dirty bit
• Drop-to-open: drag a file onto the window (opens a new tab)
• File ▸ Recent Files (persistent MRU, capped at 10, <config>/Notepad Studio/recent.toml)
• Per-window placement persistence (replaces the v0.0.3 single-slot file)
• Tab drag-reorder

v0.0.5 — Notepad++ basics ✅

• Find bar with incremental search (Cmd/Ctrl-F)
• Find Next / Find Previous (F3 / Shift+F3, also Enter / Shift+Enter in the find input)
• Match-case, whole-word, and regex toggles (powered by regex::RegexBuilder)
• Match counter chip — "X of Y" / "No matches" / "Invalid regex"
• All-match highlighting in the editor; current match gets a stronger tint
• Replace bar with Replace / Replace All (Ctrl-H, or Cmd-Opt-F on macOS)
• Go to Line (Ctrl-G, or Cmd-L on macOS to leave Cmd-G free for Find Next convention)
• Find in Files (Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+F) — walkdir-backed traversal, async off-main search, scrollable results panel, click-to-jump into the file
• "Extended" search mode — \n \r \t \0 \b \\ \xHH \dDDD \oOOO escape interpretation in non-regex find/replace (Find / Replace / FIF / Mark)
• Mark / Bookmark — F2 toggle, Ctrl+F2 next, Shift+F2 previous, Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+F2 clear all; gutter glyph + buffer-local set
• Replace All as a single undo step (edit-group primitive)
• Line endings toggle (CRLF / LF / CR) — click the EOL chip in the status bar to cycle
• Encoding toggle (UTF-8 / UTF-8 BOM / UTF-16 LE/BE / Latin-1) — BOM-aware load, click the encoding chip to cycle

v0.0.6 — viewing comfort

• Scrollable vertical viewport — only visible lines shape & paint
• Vertical scrollbar — drag thumb to scroll, click track to page-step
• Mouse wheel / trackpad scroll (pixel and line-mode deltas)
• PageUp / PageDown nav (with Shift- variants for selection)
• Cursor auto-scrolls into view on every move (typing, arrows, find, goto, …)
• Drag-select past the viewport edge auto-scrolls
• Async file / message dialogs — fixes a hard crash on dirty-tab close (sync rfd dialogs ran the AppKit run loop and re-entered the gpui AppCell borrow held by the outer entity.update, panicking on the next caret-blink tick). Open / Save / Save As / Close-prompt all use rfd::AsyncFileDialog / AsyncMessageDialog driven through cx.spawn_in.
• Word wrap toggle — View ▸ Word Wrap; visual-row layout pass with wrap cache
• Horizontal scrollbar (visible when wrap is off)
• Right-click context menu — in-window overlay layer; Undo/Redo, Cut/Copy/Paste/Delete, Select All, Toggle Bookmark, Go to Line, Find
• Show whitespace — View ▸ Show Whitespace (· for spaces, → for tabs)
• Zoom in/out — Cmd/Ctrl +/-/0 (VS Code style; scales chrome, gutter, and editor; persisted via <config>/Notepad Studio/window.toml)
• Full-screen toggle (F11)

v0.0.7 — Edit ops (Notepad++ parity)

• Duplicate Line / Selection — Cmd/Ctrl+D
• Move Line Up / Down — Ctrl+Shift+Up/Down (Linux/Win), Alt+Shift+Up/Down (mac)
• Delete Line — Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+L
• UPPERCASE — Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+U
• lowercase — Cmd/Ctrl+U
• Toggle Block Comment — Cmd+/ (mac), Ctrl+Q (Linux/Win)
• Toggle Stream Comment — Cmd+Shift+/ (mac), Ctrl+Shift+Q (Linux/Win)
• Insert Blank Line Above / Below — Cmd/Ctrl+Alt+Enter / Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+Enter
• Trim Trailing Whitespace — Edit menu only
• Syntax-aware comment chars — per-language tokens for all 24 grammars
• Replace All as a single undo step (edit-group primitive)

v0.1.0 — syntax & language ✅

• Tree-sitter syntax highlighting — Rust, Python, C, C#, JS/TS/TSX, JSON, Markdown, Bash/Sh/Zsh/Ksh, PowerShell, Go, Java, Swift, Ruby, PHP, C++, Lua, HTML, CSS, SCSS, YAML, TOML, XML, SQL (24 languages). Filename detection (Rakefile, Gemfile) and shebang fallback. Kotlin and Dockerfile not yet supported (grammar incompatibilities).
• Bracket matching — depth-aware pair lookup, skips brackets inside strings/comments via tree-sitter span filter; falls back to dumb scan when no language
• Auto-indent — Enter inherits leading whitespace; extra indent after {, [, (
• Comment toggle (syntax-aware) — per-language tokens for all 24 grammars (HTML/XML/Markdown wrap line ranges in <!-- -->; JSON no-op)

Settings ✅

• Shortcut Mapper — Settings ▸ Shortcut Mapper; rebind any action, conflict detection, persisted to <config>/Notepad Studio/shortcuts.toml

Polish ✅

• Multi-click selection — double-click a word, triple-click a line, quad+-click select-all
• Drop-to-open — drag any file onto the window to open it as a new tab
• Notepad++-style icon toolbar above the tab strip — File / Edit / Search / View / Macro / Plugins groups, monochrome SVGs tinted from the active theme, hover + pressed states, disabled state for unavailable actions

Beyond

• Column-mode selection + multi-edit — alt-drag a rectangle, virtual columns extend past EOL, typing/Backspace/Delete/Cut/Copy/Paste all operate rectangularly in a single undo step, sentinel-tagged clipboard so Notepad Studio→Notepad Studio block paste lands as column paste; Cmd/Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Arrow extends the block by keyboard. Word-wrap + block paint together, and the Column Editor numeric-series dialog, deferred
• Macro record / replay — Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+R toggle recording, Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+P playback, Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+M opens an inline "Run N times" prompt; Save Currently Recorded prompts for a name, persists to <config>/Notepad Studio/macros.toml, and the saved entries appear under the Macro menu for one-click replay
• Plugin host — native cdylib plugins drop into <config>/Notepad Studio/plugins/ and load at startup via libloading; the notepad-studio-plugin crate defines the C-ABI (PluginInfo / HostApi) and ships a safe Plugin trait + declare_plugin! macro for authors. The Plugins menu lists every loaded plugin with one submenu per plugin and one menu item per command. See the Plugins section below
• Large-file streaming reads — files >10 MB stream in 1 MB chunks on the bg executor with status-bar progress + Cancel; >2 GB shows a confirm-open dialog; syntax highlighting skipped above 50 MB
• Session restore — open tabs, scroll positions, selections, and per-window placement persist across restarts; saved on autosave tick, on window close, and on app quit (0cd4008 8b6327b d8ba325)

Plugins

Notepad Studio loads native cdylib plugins from the editor's per-user plugins directory:

Platform	Path
macOS	~/Library/Application Support/Notepad Studio/plugins/
Linux	$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/Notepad Studio/plugins/ (defaults to ~/.config/Notepad Studio/plugins/)
Windows	%APPDATA%\Notepad Studio\plugins\

The directory is auto-created on first launch. To install a plugin, drop its .dylib (mac) / .so (linux) / .dll (windows) in there and restart Notepad Studio. The Plugins menu shows one submenu per loaded plugin with each exposed command as a menu item; "Plugins ▸ Open Plugins Folder" reveals the directory in the OS file manager.

A sample plugin (Uppercase Selection + Show Hello) lives under crates/sample-uppercase-plugin — build with cargo build -p sample-uppercase-plugin --release and copy target/release/libsample_uppercase_plugin.{dylib,so,dll} into the plugins directory.

The plugin ABI is defined by the notepad-studio-plugin crate. v1 exposes buffer read/write, selection read/write, and a status bar message. ABI is versioned (PLUGIN_API_VERSION = 1); plugins built against a different version are skipped at load time with a stderr log.

Trust: plugins run as native code with full process privileges. A hostile plugin can read every file the editor can read and execute any code your user account can. Only install plugins you trust. A capability sandbox (wasmtime) is on the v2 roadmap.

License

Apache-2.0 — see LICENSE.