NotepadMacMac

A fast, native macOS text editor in the spirit of Notepad++ — built from the ground up in Swift on top of AppKit. NotepadMacMac aims to be the quick-to-launch, no-friction scratchpad and code editor that macOS has been missing: open a file, edit it, save it, get out.

Status: v1.5.4 — Obsidian-style live Markdown preview with rendered tables, Developer ID signed and Apple-notarized (universal Apple Silicon + Intel build).

---

Why NotepadMacMac?

macOS ships with TextEdit, which is fine for the occasional note but isn't designed for programmers or power users. The other end of the spectrum — VS Code, Sublime, the JetBrains suite — is overkill when you just want to peek at a log, tweak a config file, or jot something down.

NotepadMacMac sits in the middle:

• Launches instantly. It's a small, native AppKit app — not Electron.
• Real tabs, real sessions. Reopen the app and your tabs come back exactly as you left them, including unsaved scratch content.
• Plain text first. Copy/cut/paste is always plain text — no surprise RTF formatting leaking into your editor or your clipboard.
• Sensible defaults for developers. Line numbers, current-line highlight, syntax colors for common languages, find & replace, go-to-line, word completion, and a status bar with cursor/encoding info — all on by default, all configurable.

If you've ever wished Notepad++ ran natively on macOS, this is for you.

Features

Editing

• Multi-tab document editor with drag-to-reorder tabs
• Drag a tab out of the window to spawn a new instance (or merge tabs back in)
• Split-view editing for side-by-side files / file comparison
• Plain-text copy, cut, and paste — RTF formatting is stripped on the way in and the way out
• Line operations: duplicate line, move/delete line, etc.
• Word completion as you type
• Macro recorder for repetitive edits
• Clickable URLs in the editor
• Auto-detected indentation per file
• Per-tab word wrap toggle
• Configurable current-line highlight

Navigation & search

• Find & Replace (per document)
• Find in Files (across a folder)
• Go to Line
• Function List panel — jump to functions/symbols in the current document
• Document Map — minimap-style overview of the current file
• Folder workspace / project panel for browsing a directory tree
• Document List panel for quickly switching between open tabs

Sessions & files

• Session restore: tabs, cursor positions, and unsaved scratch content persist across app restarts
• Recent Files submenu in the File menu
• Single-instance behavior: opening a file from Finder reuses the running app (with optional offset for new windows)
• Modified-dot indicator on tabs
• External-change detection: if an open file is modified or deleted by another app (e.g. TextEdit), NotepadMacMac prompts you to reload it from disk or keep your in-editor version

Languages & syntax highlighting

First-class syntax highlighting for:

Swift · Python · Java · C# · Go · Rust · Ruby · PHP · Dart · Kotlin · Shell (bash/zsh) · SQL · JSON · CSS · Markdown

Many more file types are recognized for opening (HTML, XML, YAML, TOML, plist, GraphQL, etc.).

Customization

• Theme manager (light/dark, configurable colors)
• Shortcut Mapper for rebinding keyboard shortcuts
• User Defined Language (UDL) editor — define your own syntax rules
• Preferences window for fonts, tabs/spaces, indentation, and more
• Plugin manager (extension point for future plugins)

Requirements

• macOS 13.0 (Ventura) or later
• Apple Silicon (arm64) or Intel (x86_64) — the release binary is a universal Mach-O containing both slices
• For building from source: Swift 6.0 toolchain (Xcode 16 or swift.org toolchain)

Installation

Homebrew (recommended)

brew tap boschma1/notepadmacmac
brew install --cask notepadmacmac
open -a NotepadMacMac

The cask installs the Developer ID signed, Apple-notarized universal build, and brew upgrade --cask notepadmacmac keeps it current.

Download the release

1. Grab the latest build from Releases. Either of these download URLs works:

   • Latest (always-fresh): https://github.com/boschma1/NotepadMacMac/releases/latest/download/NotepadMacMac-latest.zip
   • A specific version: the NotepadMacMac-vX.Y.Z-macOS-universal.zip asset attached to that release.

2. Unzip and drag NotepadMacMac.app into /Applications.

3. Releases from v1.1.0 onward are signed with a Developer ID Application certificate and notarized by Apple, so the app launches with no Gatekeeper prompt on macOS 13+.

   Older builds (≤ v1.2.0) are ad-hoc signed. If you're on one of those, either right-click → Open the first time, or remove the quarantine attribute:

   xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/NotepadMacMac.app

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/boschma1/NotepadMacMac.git
cd NotepadMacMac
swift build -c release --arch arm64 --arch x86_64
# the universal binary lands at .build/apple/Products/Release/NotepadMacMac

To run inside the bundled .app:

cp .build/apple/Products/Release/NotepadMacMac \
   NotepadMacMac.app/Contents/MacOS/NotepadMacMac
open NotepadMacMac.app

Cutting a release

The whole release flow — build, refresh the in-tree .app bundle, codesign with the Developer ID Application identity, notarize and staple the bundle, commit, tag, push, and create the GitHub release with both a versioned asset and the stable NotepadMacMac-latest.zip — is wrapped up in a single script:

# 1. Bump CFBundleShortVersionString in NotepadMacMac.app/Contents/Info.plist
#    and `static let version` in Sources/NotepadMacMac/Config/AppConfig.swift
#    to the same value (e.g. 1.2.0).
# 2. Make any other source changes for the release. Leave everything uncommitted.
# 3. (Optional) write release notes to a markdown file.
# 4. Run:

./scripts/release.sh \
    --message "Add fancy new feature (v1.2.0)" \
    --notes-file release-notes.md

The script verifies that both version strings agree, that the tag doesn't already exist locally or on the remote, builds the release binary, refreshes the bundle, codesigns it (with the hardened runtime + secure timestamp), submits the zip to Apple's notary service, staples the ticket onto the bundle, re-zips, shows a summary, and on confirmation commits + tags + pushes + creates the GitHub release with both:

• NotepadMacMac-vX.Y.Z-macOS-universal.zip (versioned, archival)
• NotepadMacMac-latest.zip (stable, served from the always-latest URL)

Useful flags:

• --dry-run — build, sign, and notarize, but don't commit / tag / push / publish. The built zip path is printed so you can inspect it.
• --yes — skip the interactive confirmation.
• --no-notarize — sign with Developer ID but skip the notary submission (faster for offline test builds; the resulting zip will NOT pass Gatekeeper on a fresh machine).
• --ad-hoc — fall back to the pre-v1.1.0 ad-hoc signing flow (no Developer ID, no notarization). Implies --no-notarize.

Signing and notarization (first-time setup)

The release script needs two things in place on the machine running it:

1. A Developer ID Application certificate installed in the login keychain. The easiest way to provision one is via Xcode:

   • Open Xcode → Settings → Accounts, sign in with the Apple ID attached to your Apple Developer Program membership.

   • Select the team, click Manage Certificates…, then + → Developer ID Application. Xcode generates the cert, uploads the CSR to Apple, downloads the signed cert, and installs it in your login keychain.

   • Confirm it's there:

     security find-identity -v -p codesigning | grep "Developer ID Application"

2. A notarytool keychain profile that stores your Apple ID + Team ID + an app-specific password. Create the app-specific password at appleid.apple.com → Sign-In and Security → App-Specific Passwords, then run once:

   xcrun notarytool store-credentials notepadmacmac-notary \
       --apple-id   <your-apple-id-email> \
       --team-id    <TEAMID10> \
       --password   <app-specific-password>

   Verify the profile works:

   xcrun notarytool history --keychain-profile notepadmacmac-notary

The script auto-detects the first Developer ID Application identity in the keychain and defaults the notary profile name to notepadmacmac-notary. Override either with --sign-identity / --notary-profile on the command line, or with the NOTEPAD_SIGN_IDENTITY / NOTEPAD_NOTARY_PROFILE environment variables.

Project layout

NotepadMacMac/
├── Package.swift                  # Swift Package manifest (executable target)
├── NotepadMacMac.app/               # Curated .app bundle (Info.plist, icon, signature)
├── Resources/                     # App icon and bundled resources
└── Sources/NotepadMacMac/
    ├── App/                       # AppDelegate, MenuManager, entry point
    ├── Config/                    # Preferences, themes, sessions, recent files, plugins
    ├── Document/                  # Document model & manager
    ├── Editor/                    # Syntax highlighter, macros, word completion, line highlight
    └── UI/                        # Windows, tab bar, panels, find/replace, gutter, status bar

Roadmap

The next planned release is tracked under the v1.1.0 milestone. Highlights:

• Universal (arm64 + x86_64) builds
• Developer ID signing and notarization
• Plugin API documentation
• More built-in language definitions
• Automated test suite

See ROADMAP.md for the full plan.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. Please open an issue first for larger changes so we can discuss the approach.

License

To be decided. Until a license file is added, all rights are reserved by the author — please open an issue if you need a specific license for your use case.