Notepad Replacements

These are simpler editors which can be used as Windows Notepad replacements. They are mainly SDI applications and generally not full featured editors, but still provide many of the features you will ever need. They are small in size and load fast.

If you are looking for a quick overview of the features of these applications, you might want to check our detailed comparison of Notepad replacements. The "Notepad Replacement Guide" contains instructions on how to actually replace Notepad.

Notepad2

Notepad2 is an excellent small and fast editor with syntax highlighting for HTML and other common languages and many other useful features, including column editing, drag and drop, regular expression search and replace, brace matching, line numbers, keyboard shortcuts, whitespace display, zooming and more. Notepad2 offers support for Unicode, UTF-8, Unix and Mac text files. It integrates well with MetaPath, the universal Explorer-like plugin.
[OS: Windows] [Price: Free]

Notepad++

Notepad++ is an excellent free source code editor which supports several programming languages, autocompletion, multiple document, multiple view, macros, etc. It is very fast and configurable.
[OS: Windows] [Price: Free]

Xint

Xint is a Notepad replacement that features formatting options such as URL encoding, CSV conversion, HTML stripping, A-Z sorting, as well as browser preview, word count, case conversions and more. Xint also includes an enhanced search and replace features, a hex color picker, date insert and more. Xint also includes a built-in encryption feature, allowing you to secure a file, using 160-bit Twofish encryption.
[OS: Windows] [Price: Free]

Metapad

Metapad is a small, fast and free text editor which features the unique "Dirty file notification". If you've ever had trouble cleaning binary files, get Metapad to do it for you.
[OS: Windows] [Price: Free]

subpad

Subpad is a lightweight notepad clone with all of the features of Windows notepad, with just a few extras added. The main purpose was to make something close to notepad.exe, but with faster find/replace, column editing, MRU documents, and syntax highlighting. Subpad's find/replace routine is perhaps one of the fastest out there (Boyer-Moore algorithm written in assembler). It also comes with a handy feature that lets you roll-up the window by right-clicking on the title bar (same as in KDE).
[OS: Windows] [Price: Free]

evolvEd

evolvEd is a general purpose text editor, with special support for HTML and scripting languages. It offers customizable syntax highlighting, built-in function tips, tag completion, template support and much more. Besides the standard text editing functions, it also includes various handy features, including browser preview, file insertion, bracket matching, line numbers, word count, export to RTF, HTML color picker and more.
[OS: Windows] [Price: Free]

EditPad Lite

EditPad Lite is a powerful and versatile text editor or word processor. Designed to make text editing as convenient as possible, using EditPad Lite to edit text files will save you a lot of time and frustration.
[OS: Windows, Linux] [Price: Free, Pro version $39.95]

NotepadEx

NotepadEx is a simple replacement for Notepad. Note that it replaces Notepad without asking, some people might not like this behaviour.
[OS: Windows] [Price: Free]

EDXOR

EDXOR is a versatile, convenient and optimal text editor and file processor that far surpasses the capabilities and performance of other Notepad-like applications. It offers innovative clipboard handling, cryptographic options and logic text conversions, great for education, fun, or privacy. EDXOR is small (34K), self-contained, dependency-free and very fast. It provides over 90 menu items, including many unique functions and options, for diverse applications.
[OS: Windows] [Price: Free]