Simple Notepad

A faithful, lightweight clone of the classic Windows Notepad — built with .NET 10 and Avalonia (XAML) so it runs natively on Linux, Windows, and macOS. It follows your system light/dark theme and ships with a desktop entry and icon.

There is also a Windows-only .NET Framework / WinForms version kept for reference in winforms-dotnet-framework/. It only builds on Windows.

Features

Everything the original Notepad does, and nothing it doesn't:

• File — New, Open, Save, Save As, Exit, with unsaved-changes prompts and an Untitled default document.
• Edit — Undo, Redo, Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete, Find, Find Next, Replace, Go To line, Select All, and Time/Date (F5).
• Format — Word Wrap toggle and a Font picker.
• View — Zoom in/out/reset and a toggleable status bar showing Ln / Col, zoom level, line endings, and encoding.
• Help — About box.
• Standard keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl+N/O/S, Ctrl+F/H/G, F3, F5, Ctrl + +/−/0).
• Follows the system theme (light/dark).
• Opens a file passed on the command line.

Install (Linux)

Snap (any distro with snap, zero setup):

sudo snap install wdnotepad

One line — installs the .NET runtime and the app:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/billsecond/simple-notepad-linux/main/get.sh | bash

This clones the repo and runs install.sh, which automatically installs the .NET 10 SDK into ~/.dotnet if it isn't already present, then builds and installs Simple Notepad.

Or via APT (true apt install, with apt update upgrades):

sudo install -d /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://billsecond.github.io/simple-notepad-linux/pubkey.gpg \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/keyrings/wdnotepad.gpg >/dev/null
echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/wdnotepad.gpg] https://billsecond.github.io/simple-notepad-linux ./" \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/wdnotepad.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install wdnotepad

Or from a local checkout:

./install.sh          # per-user install into ~/.local (no root needed)
sudo ./install.sh     # system-wide install into /usr/local

After installing, run notepad (or wdnotepad) from a terminal or launch "Simple Notepad" from your application menu.

The installer publishes a self-contained build (so the result runs without needing the .NET SDK/runtime installed), then:

• installs the app under ~/.local/share/simple-notepad/,
• creates four launchers on your PATH — notepad, Notepad, notepad.exe, Notepad.exe — each of which works with or without a filename argument,
• registers a desktop entry + icon (simple-notepad.desktop), and
• prompts whether to make Notepad the default app for common text files.

Then just run, for example:

notepad                 # empty "Untitled" document
notepad.exe notes.txt   # open a file
Notepad ~/todo          # any capitalization, any/no extension

If the installer warns that ~/.local/bin isn't on your PATH, add export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH" to your ~/.bashrc and restart the shell.

To remove everything:

./uninstall.sh          # or: sudo ./uninstall.sh for a system install

Building / running manually

Requires the .NET 10 SDK (dotnet).

dotnet run -c Release                 # build & run
dotnet run -c Release -- notes.txt    # open a file
dotnet build -c Release               # just build -> bin/Release/net10.0/

Project layout

File	Purpose
Program.cs	Avalonia entry point.
App.axaml(.cs)	Application setup, theme, command-line file argument.
MainWindow.axaml(.cs)	The editor window — menus, status bar, all commands.
FindReplaceWindow.cs	Modeless Find / Replace tool window.
Dialogs.cs	Message box, Go To, and Font dialogs.
Assets/notepad.png	Application / window icon.
install.sh / uninstall.sh	Linux installer and uninstaller.
Notepad.csproj	Build configuration (.NET 10 + Avalonia).
winforms-dotnet-framework/	Reference Windows-only WinForms version.