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NPad requires macOS 26 or later. It’s a Universal app, so it runs natively on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs, and it’s available on the Mac App Store.

No. NPad runs inside Apple’s App Sandbox with no network access at all, and it contains no telemetry or analytics. Everything you type stays on your Mac. See the Privacy Policy for details.

Locally on your Mac, inside NPad’s App Sandbox container. Your open files and unsaved drafts are restored the next time you open NPad, even after you quit the app. Drafts appear under Drafts in the sidebar, each showing its first line as a preview.

Drafts never leave your Mac: NPad has no network access, so nothing is synced or uploaded anywhere.

Press ⌃⌘S or click the sidebar button in the toolbar. Do the same again to bring it back.

With the sidebar hidden, you can still switch files from the keyboard: ⌃Tab / ⌃⇧Tab show the next / previous file, ⌘1–⌘8 jump to a file and ⌘9 to the last one.

• Type in the filter field at the top of the sidebar to search your files by name and folder.
• Drag a file up or down to reorder it within its section. The ⌘1–⌘9 shortcuts follow the sidebar order, drafts first.
• The Recent section keeps up to 5 recently closed files; click one to reopen it.
• Right-click a file for Close File, Close Other Files, Show in Finder and Copy Path.

In code files, NPad automatically inserts the matching closing bracket or quote as you type. If you’d rather type them yourself, turn this option off in NPad’s Settings.

Plain-text files don’t record which encoding they use, so NPad detects it automatically from the file’s contents. It recognizes UTF-8, UTF-16, Windows-1252, ISO-8859-1 and Mac Roman.

Some of these encodings are almost identical for everyday text. Windows-1252 and ISO-8859-1, for example, only differ in a few characters, and a file that contains only basic ASCII characters is valid in all of them, so the detected name may not be the one you had in mind even though the text is read correctly.

Either way, NPad never silently converts your file: it saves the file back in the encoding it was opened with, and keeps its original line endings (LF, CRLF or CR).

The editor window has two drop zones:

• Drop a file on the left half of the editor to insert its contents into the current document.
• Drop a file on the right half to open the file itself.

NPad notices. If you haven’t edited the file, it simply reloads the new version. If you have unsaved edits, it asks you what to do instead of throwing your changes away, and it warns you before you overwrite a file that was changed by someone else.

Yes. NPad only lays out the part of the file that’s visible on screen. In our measurements, a 150,000-line, 7.7 MB log needs about 30 ms of editor setup, and typing stays around 1 ms per keystroke.

NPad highlights JSON, XML and C#. JSON and XML can also be formatted from the Tools menu; if the content isn’t valid, NPad shows an error message instead of changing your text.

NPad is a plain-text editor, so pasted text never carries fonts, colors or other styling. You always get just the text, ready to edit.

NPad’s interface is available in English, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish, German, French, Japanese and Simplified Chinese.