The humble text editor is great for managing code, writing down quick notes, or just as a distraction-free writing tool. This week, we’re looking at five of the best, based on your nominations.

Notepad, as you know, is a simple tool that contains basic text editing functions and is probably the most popular application that ships with every version of Windows. Many users set it as the default editor for text files because it’s simple and fast. However, some of us may find Notepad to be limited in functionality and need a better text editor. Fortunately, there are several free and feature-rich Notepad alternatives available for you to choose from.

In this article, I’ll talk about 5 of them. Check them out. Notepad++ is a free source code editor that’s extremely rich in functions.

Its main features are Syntax Highlighting and Syntax Folding, User Language Define System, Regular Expression Search, WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get), Unicode support, Full drag-and-drop supported, Brace and Indent guideline Highlighting, 2 edits and synchronized view of the same document and User Language Define System. Notepad++ can run under all versions of Windows. The tool is immensely popular with coders and designers who prefer to stay away from advanced tools like Dreamweaver for basic code editing needs. EditPad Lite is another multi-tab text editor that’s free for personal use and is a worthy Notepad alternative.

Compared to Notepad++ introduced above, EditPad Lite has a friendlier interface, though some advanced functions are missing. They do have a pro version with more features. Notepad2 is a fast and light-weight text editor with syntax highlighting. It is a portable tool and can be run without installation. You could carry it in a thumb drive and use it as your default text editor on any computer. The program looks similar to Windows Notepad, however, when you click on the menus, you will find a lot of differences in terms of options. TED Notepad is another Notepad alternative for you.

Just like the above utilities, the program has a Notepad-like interface to help you get started quickly. TED Notepad also provides a portable version; the program itself has a size of 120k and has several cool features that are unknown to Notepad.

AkelPad While all the tools above have advanced functions, is a simple open source editor for plain text. It is designed to be a small and fast replacement for Notepad. You can add some more functions by installing the plugins available for this tool. So, have you tried using any other text editor other than Notepad? If yes, tell us about your experience of using it.

Last updated on 8 Feb, 2018.

Plain text mode is not the default mode in TextEdit on your Mac. TextEdit was designed to be a rich text editor. In TextEdit, you can apply various fonts to your text, change the size and color of text, and apply another formatting like centering, line spacing, and bulleted lists. However, TextEdit can also serve as a simple text editor like Notepad in Windows. It can be used to remove formatting from copied text, work with code, or just jot down and save a quick note. Today we’ll show you how to convert to a TextEdit document to plain text mode, save files as plain text, and use plain text mode by default in Text Edit.

Convert Text To Plain Text Mode By default, TextEdit opens a new document in rich text mode with the formatting toolbar and the ruler available. When TextEdit is in rich text mode, you cannot save a document as a plain text file.

The following image shows the only formats available while in rich text mode. Step 1: You can easily convert any TextEdit rich text document to plain text mode at any time. To do so, open your rich text document in TextEdit and go to Format > Make Plain Text. You can also press “Shift+Command+T”. Step 2: A confirmation dialog box displays. Converting your document to plain text removes all formatting, images, attachments, and document properties. So, be sure you want to convert your document to text.

If you’re sure, click OK to convert your document to plain text mode. NOTE: If you haven’t applied any formatting to your text, such as bold, italic, underline, etc., you won’t see this confirmation dialog box. Step 3: The formatting toolbar and ruler are removed from the TextEdit window.

All the formatting is removed and the text is converted to the Menlo font, size 11. In plain text mode, you can still change the font and size using the Format menu. Step 4: You can convert a plain text document to a rich text document by going to Format >How do you check folder size on outlook for mac. Make Rich Text while the document is open. However, if the document was originally a rich text document, you will not get back the original formatting.