Notepad for Mac: The Mac Equivalent of Windows Notepad

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The short answer

TextEdit is the free answer, already on every Mac: set it to plain text and it does what Notepad did. Caxton, a native Mac editor for text and data files, is for the file TextEdit cannot hold: a huge log, or a CSV you want as a table, opened, searched, filtered and edited at any size.

Does a Mac have Notepad?

Not by that name. The Mac equivalent of Windows Notepad is TextEdit, which is built into every Mac. You will find it in the Applications folder, or press ⌘Space, type TextEdit and press Return to open it with Spotlight. It opens and saves .txt files, and with two settings changed it behaves like Notepad: plain text, nothing styled, nothing corrected.

How do I make TextEdit behave like Notepad?

TextEdit starts a new document as rich text, with styles, smart quotes and automatic corrections, which is the opposite of what Notepad did. Apple's TextEdit guide documents each switch.

1. Make the current document plain text

Apple's guide: "Remove all formatting: Choose Format > Make Plain Text." It adds that "When you change a rich text document to plain text, the document loses all text styles and formatting, and the document saves as a .txt file." That is the Notepad behavior, document by document.

2. Make plain text the default for new documents

In TextEdit ▸ Settings, on the New Document tab, Apple's guide lists "Plain text: Set the default format to plain text. Plain text doesn't allow text formatting." From then on every new document starts as plain text.

3. Turn off smart quotes, smart dashes and autocorrect

On the same New Document tab, Apple documents "Smart quotes: Automatically substitute curly quotation marks for straight quotation marks" and a Smart dashes option that substitutes a long dash "for double hyphens (--) in new documents," both of which you can switch off, along with the option to "Check and correct spelling in rich text documents only." For one document, the macOS guide says "open the app, then choose Edit > Spelling and Grammar > Correct Spelling Automatically (it's off when a checkmark isn't shown)," and for text replacement, "choose Edit > Substitutions, then choose Text Replacement (a checkmark shows whether it's on or off)." With these off, what you type is what the file holds, which matters for code, configuration files and anything a program will read.

4. Show HTML files as code

By default TextEdit renders an HTML file as a formatted page. On the Open and Save tab of its settings, Apple documents "Display HTML files as HTML code instead of formatted text: Always view the HTML code when opening an HTML file." The same tab holds the "Plain Text File Encoding" menus for opening and saving, which is where to look if a file comes up with the wrong characters.

Why is the Notes app not the same thing?

Notes is for notes: it keeps them inside the Notes app and syncs them between your devices. It does not save a .txt file that you can hand to a program, attach to a ticket or keep in a project folder, and it styles what you type. When the thing you want is a file on disk with exactly the characters you typed, which is what Notepad gave you, TextEdit in plain text mode is the tool, and Notes is not.

Notepad Next on a Mac

If Notepad meant Notepad++ to you, there is a project that brings its interface to the Mac. Notepad Next describes itself in its README as "A cross-platform, reimplementation of Notepad++." The same README says "Packages are available for Windows, Linux, and MacOS," that "MacOS disk images can be downloaded from the release page," and that it installs with Homebrew: brew tap dail8859/notepadnext, then brew install notepadnext. It also carries a warning worth repeating: "Though the application overall is stable and usable, it should not be considered safe for critically important work." It is a community project, independent of the Notepad++ project itself.

What if I used Notepad++?

Notepad++ users want tabs, syntax coloring and a programmer's find. Besides Notepad Next above, two editors cover that on a Mac, each described from its own documentation.

BBEdit is "the leading professional HTML and text editor for macOS" by its maker's description, "universal, for Macs with Intel and Apple silicon processors," with "macOS 14.0 or later required." After its evaluation period, its site says, "you can still use BBEdit" with "no nag screens or unsolicited interruptions, for free, forever," in a free mode with a reduced feature set.
Visual Studio Code "is available for macOS through a downloadable disk image" and "supports Intel-based Macs and Macs with Apple silicon." It is a full development editor rather than a notepad, and its documented behavior with very large files is in the file is too large for VS Code.

The full comparison, feature by feature, is in Notepad++ for Mac: what to use instead.

When you need more than TextEdit

TextEdit is the right answer for a note, a list, a small script or a config file. Three jobs are past it.

A file too large for it. A multi-gigabyte log or export is not what TextEdit is built for. Large file text editors on a Mac compares what exists; Caxton opens a text file of any size, with a file of 300 MB or more going through its Open Large File dialog and the rest indexed in the background while you read.
A CSV you want as a table. TextEdit shows the commas. Caxton opens a .csv straight into a table that is a view of the file, with every value exactly as written, and shows the plain text again at one click. How to open a CSV file on a Mac walks through it.
A log you need to search and filter. Caxton's Find counts every match in the file, Filter Lines shows only the lines that match, and Log Mode jumps to a time. How to filter a large log file on a Mac shows the moves.

Opening, searching and filtering are Caxton Free, with no time limit; editing and saving a file are Caxton Pro, which every download includes as a 7-day free trial of Caxton Pro with no credit card required. Caxton is a 7 MB download for macOS 13.0 and later.

For the file TextEdit cannot hold: open it at any size, read a CSV as a table, search and filter a log, free.

Download Caxton for Free

7-day free trial of Caxton Pro, every feature, no credit card required. After it, Caxton Free keeps opening, searching and filtering at any size.

Frequently asked questions

Does a Mac have Notepad?

Do I need to download Notepad on a Mac?

No. TextEdit is built into every Mac and does what Notepad did once it is set to plain text, so there is nothing to download. Sites that offer a Notepad for Mac download are not from Microsoft; skip them and use TextEdit, or one of the editors on this page, each from its own maker.

How do I create a .txt file on a Mac?

Open TextEdit, choose Format > Make Plain Text if the document is rich text, type, and save. Apple's guide says a document changed to plain text saves as a .txt file. In Finder you can also right-click in a folder and use New Document when a text editor adds that option, but TextEdit is the built-in way.

How do I save a file as plain text?

In TextEdit choose Format > Make Plain Text, then save. The formatting is removed and the document saves as a .txt file. To make every new document plain text, turn on Plain text under TextEdit > Settings > New Document.

How do I open a .txt file on a Mac?

Double-click it; TextEdit opens .txt files by default. To open one in another app, right-click it and choose Open With. For a .txt file too large for TextEdit, Caxton opens it at any size, free.

Sources

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