Metapad
Shares rank 47 of 56 text editors by recommenders
A small free Notepad replacement that people say beats Windows Notepad, including on large files. No critic in the quotes raises a caveat.
A small free Notepad replacement that people say beats Windows Notepad, including on large files. No critic in the quotes raises a caveat.
5 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 5
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 3 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 5 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 3 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Better than Windows Notepad
“still better than notepad ever was. Also loads 100k lines files quickly.”
Comment from 11 Feb 2026 in “Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability” “This was already better when the latest from MS was still called "* XP"”
Comment from 11 Feb 2026 in “Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability”
Other text editors people recommend
The four most recommended other text editors, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zed | 700 | 430 | 62% | 13 | 6 mo57 owners | — |
| GNU Emacs | 648 | 207 | 76% | 13 | 20 yrs158 owners | Approved |
| Vim | 513 | 127 | 80% | 13 | 20 yrs55 owners | Approved |
| Visual Studio Code | 485 | 547 | 47% | 12 | 2 yrs13 owners | — |
| MetapadThis page | 5 | 0 | 100% | 3 | — | — |
What people said
5 of the 7 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“There is a more recently maintained fork here”
“still better than notepad ever was. Also loads 100k lines files quickly.”
“I loved it back in the day.”
“This was already better when the latest from MS was still called "* XP"”
“Use MetaPad - like Notepad.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.