# Metapad

5 Hacker News commenters recommended Metapad and 0 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 3 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** A small free Notepad replacement that people say beats Windows Notepad, including on large files. No critic in the quotes raises a caveat.

## Why people recommend it

- Better than Windows Notepad (2 comments): "still better than notepad ever was. Also loads 100k lines files quickly." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46974921)) "This was already better when the latest from MS was still called "* XP"" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46972429))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Windows Notepad](https://hackerapproved.com/p/windows-notepad.md): 86 recommend
- [TextEdit](https://hackerapproved.com/p/textedit.md): 15 recommend
- [Microsoft Edit](https://hackerapproved.com/p/edit-exe.md): 10 recommend
- [CotEditor](https://hackerapproved.com/p/coteditor.md): 9 recommend
- [Pico text editor](https://hackerapproved.com/p/pico.md): 6 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Metapad", https://hackerapproved.com/p/metapad/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).