StackShareStackShare
Follow on
StackShare

Discover and share technology stacks from companies around the world.

Follow on

© 2025 StackShare. All rights reserved.

Product

  • Stacks
  • Tools
  • Feed

Company

  • About
  • Contact

Legal

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Service
  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Code Collaboration
  4. Text Editor
  5. Brackets vs Notepad++

Brackets vs Notepad++

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Notepad++
Notepad++
Stacks20.4K
Followers16.8K
Votes421
Brackets
Brackets
Stacks450
Followers752
Votes202
GitHub Stars33.1K
Forks7.6K

Brackets vs Notepad++: What are the differences?

Key Differences between Brackets and Notepad++

  1. User Interface: Brackets has a cleaner and more intuitive user interface compared to Notepad++. It has a sidebar that provides easy access to files, a quick edit feature, and a live preview option. Notepad++, on the other hand, has a traditional and relatively cluttered interface that may be overwhelming for beginners.

  2. Customizability: Brackets offers a higher degree of customizability compared to Notepad++. It allows users to install and manage extensions easily, enabling them to personalize their coding experience. Notepad++, although it supports plugins, has limited options for customization in comparison.

  3. Support for Web Technologies: Brackets is specifically designed for web development and provides excellent support for web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It offers features like real-time preview, inline editing, and code hinting specific to these technologies. Notepad++ also supports web technologies but may require additional plugins for advanced features.

  4. Live Preview: Brackets offers a built-in live preview feature that allows developers to see the changes made to their code in real-time without needing to refresh the browser manually. This feature enhances the development workflow and saves time. Notepad++ does not have a native live preview option and requires external tools or plugins to achieve similar functionality.

  5. Integration with Git: Brackets has seamless integration with version control systems like Git, providing developers with built-in features for code versioning and collaboration. It allows users to view Git diffs and merge changes directly within the editor. Notepad++ does not have native Git integration and relies on external tools or plugins for Git-related tasks.

  6. Multi-Language Support: Brackets supports multiple languages and provides syntax highlighting, auto-completion, and code formatting for a wide range of programming languages. It caters to developers working with diverse technologies. Notepad++ also supports multiple languages but may require additional plugins for specific language-related features.

In summary, Brackets offers a more user-friendly interface, higher customizability, better support for web technologies, built-in live preview, seamless integration with Git, and extensive multi-language support compared to Notepad++.

Share your Stack

Help developers discover the tools you use. Get visibility for your team's tech choices and contribute to the community's knowledge.

View Docs
CLI (Node.js)
or
Manual

Advice on Notepad++, Brackets

Samriddhi
Samriddhi

Machine Learning Engineer at Chefling

Sep 26, 2020

Decided

Lightweight and versatile. Huge library of extensions that enable you to integrate a host of services to your development environment. VS Code's biggest strength is its library of extensions which enables it to directly compete with every single major IDE for almost all major programming languages.

1.04M views1.04M
Comments
Andrey
Andrey

Managing Partner at WhiteLabelDevelopers

May 18, 2020

Decided

Since communication with Github is not necessary, the Atom is less convenient in working with text and code. Sublim's support and understanding of projects is best for us. Notepad for us is a completely outdated solution with an unacceptable interface. We use a good theme for Sublim ayu-dark

539k views539k
Comments
René
René

Sr. Financial Analyst

Aug 21, 2020

Review

I have used and like them both... here's my take on what to use in your case.

  1. Use whatever software your instructor is using when learning a language. It makes it simpler to start. Then change to whatever you like.
  2. Use an IDE (Integrated Development Enviroment). For Java I'd pick InteliJ (because I have found the Jetbrains IDEs great) or Visual Studio as a second pick (because it's free for individual coders).
  3. Pick your text editor: the Atom vs Notepad++, vs others question Both Atom and Notepad++ offer many features and add-ons, making it a long-disputed competition. This is what drives to chose between one and the other, and I have been alternating: On Atom: The good:
  • Good looking coding environment
  • Good autocomplete
  • Project focused structure to your files The bad:
  • Higher system resources usage
  • Slower loading time (if you are opening and closing)

Notepad++ The good:

  • Very light system resources use
  • Fast and simple, with decent code higlighting
  • Loads very fast The bad:
  • Not as pretty as Atom
  • Autocomplete and syntax checking is not that good
  • File-focused editing
479 views479
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Notepad++
Notepad++
Brackets
Brackets

Notepad++ is a free (as in "free speech" and also as in "free beer") source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Running in the MS Windows environment, its use is governed by GPL License.

With focused visual tools and preprocessor support, it is a modern text editor that makes it easy to design in the browser.

Syntax Highlighting and Syntax Folding;User Defined Syntax Highlighting and Folding: screenshot 1, screenshot 2, screenshot 3 and screenshot 4;PCRE (Perl Compatible Regular Expression) Search/Replace;GUI entirely customizable: minimalist, tab with close button, multi-line tab, vertical tab and vertical document list;Document Map;Auto-completion: Word completion, Function completion and Function parameters hint;Multi-Document (Tab interface);Multi-View;WYSIWYG (Printing);Zoom in and zoom out;Multi-Language environment supported;Bookmark;Macro recording and playback;Launch with different arguments
Code Hints from a PSD;Inline Editors;Live Preview;Preprocessor Support
Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
33.1K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
7.6K
Stacks
20.4K
Stacks
450
Followers
16.8K
Followers
752
Votes
421
Votes
202
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 104
    Syntax for all languages that i use
  • 60
    Tabbed ui
  • 56
    Great code editor
  • 54
    Fast and lightweight
  • 38
    Plugins
Cons
  • 3
    No default plugin manager
  • 2
    Can't install more advanced packets
Pros
  • 51
    Beautiful UI
  • 40
    Lightweight
  • 25
    Extremely customizable
  • 20
    Free plugins
  • 14
    Live Preview
Cons
  • 3
    Not good for backend developer
  • 1
    Bad node.js support
  • 1
    You have to edit json file to set your settings.
Integrations
No integrations available
JavaScript
JavaScript
Node.js
Node.js
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Dreamweaver
Adobe Dreamweaver

What are some alternatives to Notepad++, Brackets?

Sublime Text

Sublime Text

Sublime Text is available for OS X, Windows and Linux. One license is all you need to use Sublime Text on every computer you own, no matter what operating system it uses. Sublime Text uses a custom UI toolkit, optimized for speed and beauty, while taking advantage of native functionality on each platform.

Atom

Atom

At GitHub, we're building the text editor we've always wanted. A tool you can customize to do anything, but also use productively on the first day without ever touching a config file. Atom is modern, approachable, and hackable to the core. We can't wait to see what you build with it.

Vim

Vim

Vim is an advanced text editor that seeks to provide the power of the de-facto Unix editor 'Vi', with a more complete feature set. Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing. It is an improved version of the vi editor distributed with most UNIX systems. Vim is distributed free as charityware.

Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code

Build and debug modern web and cloud applications. Code is free and available on your favorite platform - Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows.

Emacs

Emacs

GNU Emacs is an extensible, customizable text editor—and more. At its core is an interpreter for Emacs Lisp, a dialect of the Lisp programming language with extensions to support text editing.

Neovim

Neovim

Neovim is a project that seeks to aggressively refactor Vim in order to: simplify maintenance and encourage contributions, split the work between multiple developers, enable the implementation of new/modern user interfaces without any modifications to the core source, and improve extensibility with a new plugin architecture.

VSCodium

VSCodium

It is a community-driven, freely-licensed binary distribution of Microsoft’s editor VSCode.

TextMate

TextMate

TextMate brings Apple's approach to operating systems into the world of text editors. By bridging UNIX underpinnings and GUI, TextMate cherry-picks the best of both worlds to the benefit of expert scripters and novice users alike.

gedit

gedit

gedit is the GNOME text editor. While aiming at simplicity and ease of use, gedit is a powerful general purpose text editor.

Kakoune

Kakoune

Kakoune is a code editor heavily inspired by Vim, as such most of its commands are similar to vi’s ones. Kakoune can operate in two modes, normal and insertion. In insertion mode, keys are directly inserted into the current buffer. In normal mode, keys are used to manipulate the current selection and to enter insertion mode.

Related Comparisons

GitHub
Bitbucket

Bitbucket vs GitHub vs GitLab

GitHub
Bitbucket

AWS CodeCommit vs Bitbucket vs GitHub

Kubernetes
Rancher

Docker Swarm vs Kubernetes vs Rancher

gulp
Grunt

Grunt vs Webpack vs gulp

Graphite
Kibana

Grafana vs Graphite vs Kibana