@PeterJones yes, many thanks : global override was the cause
now all highlighting is correct as set/wanted
best regards, Guy

@Gerard-Kiekens said in Notepad++ VERY slow to open:

I agree with you that the size should not change, but it did.

Hard to argue my side cogently when you provide no data.

Editing a fresh Darkmode_Default afterwards solved the problem. This one also increased in size, but kept working as fast as it should.

But not from 220kB to 500MB.

If you want to "play"with it, you can find it here:
https://www.key-can.nl/Info/DarkModeDefault.xml

The file you linked there is only about 220kB as well. And the reason it’s a different size than the actual DarkModeDefault is because it obviously started from an old version of Choco.xml, as evidenced by the copyright notice starting:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="Windows-1252" ?> <!--// choco Copyright (c) 2008 Fabio Zendhi Nagao <http://zend.lojcomm.com.br/>

I can tell it’s an old copy of choco, though, because it is still “Windows-1252”. That was changed to UTF-8 in v7.9.3 from 2021.

DarkModeDefault was originally derived from Zenburn.xml, since the time it was created (it started with the full zenburn preamble, but eventually pared it down to

<!-- Dark mode default style for Notepad++. This file is based on Zenburn them (zenburn.xml) License: GPL2 -->

As you will probably know you can find the themes in %users%\Appdata\Roaming\Notepad++\Themes

That’s where you find your customizations. The originals (kept up to date with each update of the program) are in c:\program files\Notepad++\themes. Historically, Notepad++ would just leave your customized themes completely alone, so they would never show you any of the new styles that had been added/enabled over the last 5 years; in the recent Notepad++ releases (starting in v8.8.9, though I recommend skipping 8.8.9 and 8.9.0 and going directly to 8.9.1-or-newer because of bugs in the first two releases of this feature), it will add any missing styles or missing languages to your active theme, so that way, your Style Configurator will allow you to edit colors for new styles or languages without losing all your old theme customizations.

So the small size difference between your Choco-based theme and the actual DarkModeDefault can be explained by being based on the old Choco. The huge 500Mb size that you reported from earlier cannot be explained by anything that’s been said yet, and I still don’t understand how it could have happened inside Notepad++. And without a hint as to what the edited XML looked like for the super huge file, there’s really no way that mystery will ever be solved.

@Tangfolio ,

From a Windows command line, to pass a filename with spaces to an application, you need to put quotes around the filename. This is the way that Windows defines the command-line interface, and not something specific to Notepad++

update: sorry, that was an abbreviated response. Real life interrupted, so I posted what I had so far, at the time. continuing where I left off:

So, from the command line, notepad++.exe word1 word2.txt would try to open word1 and word2.txt in the current directory, which presumably don’t exist, whereas notepad++.exe "word1 word2.txt" would properly try to open the file with spaces in the name.

If you are using the right-click context menu in Explorer, the normal Edit with Notepad++ (which gets added via NppShell.dll, when you do a normal Notepad++ installation), then it should handle the spaces just fine. But if you created your own Notepad++ entry using regedit or a registry .reg file, you have to make sure that your entry says, "c:\Program Files\Notepad++\notepad++.exe" "%1", with the quotes around each, otherwise it will behave as you described.

Again, requiring the quotes around the filename is just the way Windows OS has defined the command-line interface (but similar is true in other operating systems, as well, because any OS must be able to tell the difference between program file1 file2.txt trying to work on two different files and program "word1 word2.txt" trying to work on one file with a space in the name.)

@waskoma said in Cant change cursor color, and latest version shortcut to start batch file claims it cant find it:

today I upgraded to the latest versions

Which version do you think is the latest (see FAQ: Most Recent Version)? ie, did you just ? > Update Notepad++ to get v8.9.1? Or was it a few weeks ago, and pointing to v8.8.8 (IIRC)? Because the actual latest is v8.9.2. But if you’re not explicit, we don’t know what definition of “latest” you are using.

(since years I havent did this) and I have a c:\xxx.bat file starting from a shortcut, and now it claims it doesnt find it. when going back to older version (7.5, 8.0) this works.

can you show us the relevant portions of the <UserDefinedCommands> section of shortcuts.xml – specifically, the <Command> entry for the c:\xxx.bat … because the way you described your action, there shouldn’t be any change in how a run-menu-command is processed between v8.0 and now.

also cant change cursor color, I am trying to change it in style configurator global styles -> caret color, doesnt work, theme is set to default, I have an own defined languge styler, but I dont find it in the language list in case it should be changed there. cursor is black.

It works for me, in both v8.9.1 and v8.9.2.
8476a169-99fd-402d-8f9b-09249d00da94-image.png
2d41522f-0f19-478e-bdce-7aaec055be8c-image.png

If you have done a multi-select (ctrl+click) to have multiple carets, then you also have to use Multi-Edits Colour, otherwise, they will be separate colors, as in:
aec014b8-eb99-4c14-aa05-1b9a6e964972-image.png

update: also, what are your Settings > Preferences > Editing 1 > Caret settings? Because with width=1, it’s really hard to see, and you just might not notice the change in color. For my screenshots above, I was using width=3 and super-slow blink rate, so that the screenshot would easily show the change in color. But by default, Caret settings look more like this :
65c3d853-d699-4797-b6be-e44b5f46c060-image.png

@mr10008 @Snabel42 @PeterJones
Thanks for your comments.
Looks like I got it fixed - I right-click on the installation file and run as administrator. Installation goes very quickly and the proper N++ context menu appears now.

@PeterJones Thank you so much. It is looking MUCH better now.

@jpatterson-ATL said in Unsaved?:

But, as a general rule, are you saying that if I didn’t manually save the file, that the cached changes just disappeared when I made the save choice, whatever that was?

See our periodic backup FAQ. Essentially: Notepad++ believed you when you gave it the answer. The “session snapshot and periodic backup” feature was never meant as a long-term backup (there’s the backup-on-save option for that), but as a “try to protect me, if you can, if something goes wrong on the computer between my reasonable-duration saves” feature.

The notes.txt file is stored in OneDrive but the file version history shows the newest date to be over a year ago.

It boggles my mind that you would have a named file that you cared about, and not noticed that it hadn’t saved to the OneDrive in more than a year. And not noticed that the icon on the tabbar had been saying “unsaved changes” for all that time. And that you can go that long without ever thinking about hitting Ctrl+S or clicking the Save menu or toolbar button.

Given your habit, I would highly suggest installing and configuring the AutoSave plugin, so that you don’t lose data again in the future. How to set up that plugin is described in detail in the FAQ.

@PeterJones Thank you.

@iChal2112 That worked. Thank you :).

I will add the steps in case anyone finds this post with google.

Click the settings icon in the notepad ++ ftp plugin, profile settings, click a profile you want to edit, cache, click the … button by add new button, set a local path I chose C:\Users\user_name\Downloads, set a external path I chose /, click the add new button

An odd thing to note. I am using Windows 11. I also have admin privileges on my computer but still needed to do this. Not sure why I was having trouble. This issue occurred on a red hat server. The red hat server has time out issues all the time.

I have zero problems on my sunos servers. I did not change my cache settings at all on my sunos servers.

Someone that is good with copilot pointed out another option is to use winscp with notepad ++. This required no setup. Just use winscp to open your remote file in notepad++. I have notepad ++ setup as my default text editor. Not sure if this is the case for all Linux/Unix servers but scp is more stable on the red hat server I am using.

Thx for your answers
@Coises: I’ll give it a try

@PeterJones

Ah VERY HELPFUL.

I did not realize that what I had quoted was actually a listing of tab headers.

The shading was too subtle for me to recognize that this was not an errmsg, but were actually clickable tabs.

When v8.9.1 started, the tab which was active when opening PluginAdmin was (for whatever reason) the ‘Incompatible’ tab which was entirely blank – leading me to make my error.

Old people are such fun!

Thank you so much, all is well. Well, at least it is with NPP, which is the most one can hope for at the moment - the wider world seems to be slipping beyond repair.

@PeterJones Hi, and thank you for your answer. Yes, the problem was partly due to the language, but I managed to address it before you replied. However, the other issue was actually a conflict with a shortcut from another application.

Cheers!

@Mister-Smitt said in Where does this nasty line highlighting come from??:

2026_02_12_22_0838.png

How to fix this?

Read this FAQ

And I would like you to spit in the face of the person who did this when you are next to him.

Okay, I just spit in my own face. Does that make you feel better?

(New features sometimes have bugs. The new feature of updating your horribly-outdated theme to give you access to all the modern styles that have been hidden from you for years was a great idea, but the original implementation, under certain circumstances, had unintended side effects. And the relatively few people who updated to v8.8.9 or 8.9.0 have to go through a bit of extra effort; those who skipped those two versions will not have the side effects. But if spitting in my face helps you, go ahead.)

Moderator note: with the recent post in this Topic, my attention was drawn here. And I saw that at least one of the most recent links was a malicious download site, so I removed that link. But that has made me revisit all the links in this Topic. Any that are direct links to an actual alternative editor’s official site, or a github page, are left. Ones that are ad-ridden “blogs” with dubious reviews of editors are being removed, because they are all years out-of-date and/or possibly malicious downloads: honestly, if you can type the words “alternative for Notepad++ on Mac”, you can do your own modern websearch and find dozens of those “alternative to” websites which claim to review applictions, and we don’t need this forum to be a link to outdated ad/“review” sites; such links are not helpful to anyone here.

@PeterJones said in "In Find, Regex Search in Current File Limited to "Find Next" Downward Direction Only":

Perfect, thank you for the explanation about how the config file is managed.

One point: I was the one who hallucinated, trying to find a reason for this limitation in regex usage.

Thanks for the clarification!

Much appreciated!

@PeterJones , Perfect, many thanks,

@PeterJones
Thanks for the clear explanation, That really cleared up my confusion. I appreciate you taking the time to break it down and explain what actually happened and why updating is safe now.