# Notepad2

5 Hacker News commenters recommended Notepad2 and 0 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 3 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People recommend it as a free, lightweight Notepad replacement that starts instantly and still has a useful feature set.

## Why people recommend it

- Free and works like Notepad (1 comments): "It's free, it works like Notepad, and it acts like a bare bones text editor." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47166966))
- Starts instantly on ordinary hardware (1 comments): "Instead I use Notepad2 and Notepad++ which are instant on the same hardware" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49601791))
- Faster than Notepad++ (1 comments): "it's even snappier than Notepad++" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46569834))
- Fully featured yet light (1 comments): "fully featured (but still light)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46974846))

## 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, "Notepad2", https://hackerapproved.com/p/notepad2/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).