@NolanNolan said in How to change file icon on txt files ?:

@PeterJones
thanks, i tied several of these suggestions no solution. The search shows more of a speculation than a solution unfortunately.

From what I could see, all of those should have worked, depending on the era, and what OS the pages were about. (Unfortunately, even with windows 11 in the search term, often results include non-11-specific answers.) But which one is applicable to your situation depends on your situation, which those sites cannot know, so you have to make educated choices as to which are appropriate based on what you know.

Any other suggestions of solutions to this ?

My suggestion actually works. See description below.

third party apps like filetypeman from nirsoft, types.exe or default program editor does not work.

I highly doubt you tried all of those, or at least tried them correctly.

Earlier, I mentioned HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\ . Since my brief description of what was needed was based on my Win11 experiments a year or two ago, and I’m on a fresh computer compared to those, I thought I’d experiment just to make sure, and it does in fact work.

Below, when I mention “key”, it will be displayed as a “folder” in the Registry Editor treeview on the left.

After installing Notepad++, and/or using MS Window’s “Open With” dialog to select Notepad++ as the default application for .txt files, my Windows Explorer shows Notepad++'s icon for .txt files:
ad1606c6-6b18-4a88-95be-8bcebfef4f27-image.png Run regedit.exe and paste in that key name HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\ into the “address bar” of the regedit window:
3fe5e2bd-ec05-4a60-9821-c1f9166e7b47-image.png I navigated to the UserChoice key to show that Applications\notepad++.exe is chosen, showing that Notepad++ is my default app for .txt files Go to HKCU\Software\Classes\Applications\ , and you should see notepad++.exe as one of the keys
5e48ffff-dd5b-4320-9c38-53b87d8c9d30-image.png Right Click on notepad++.exe and choose to create a New > Key called DefaultIcon (no space) On the (Default) in the right panel, insert the path to the ICO file: 809d369f-f720-44df-b44b-d90cdc2dd48e-image.png This was just an example icon that I knew where it was on my PC. You could also use something like the MS Windows notepad.exe’s icon, using %SystemRoot%\System32\notepad.exe as the (Default) value there or %SystemRoot%\System32\imageres.dll,-102 will use icon #102 from imageres.dll, which for my version of imageres.dll is another “text file” icon. you just need to pick an icon you like, and point the registry entry there If you close all Windows Explorer windows and re-open, .txt files will probably show up with the new icon. Some users find that exiting Explorer isn’t sufficient. If that’s true for you, try one or both of log out and back in reboot Advanced users will be able to use nircmd shellrefresh or otherwise send SHChangeNotify( SHCNE_ASSOCCHANGED , SHCNF_IDLIST , NULL , NULL ); , and be able to avoid even closing the Explorer window(s) – but if you don’t understand either of what I said, then this option isn’t meant for you. Screenshots with it working for various of the above icons: cpan.ico: f18268c3-8204-495d-add6-07e5cc6001b9-image.png %SystemRoot%\System32\notepad.exe: 5ab06335-bd2f-4afd-902a-d9fccbf3a062-image.png %SystemRoot%\System32\imageres.dll,-102: daa0447c-b90f-419b-856f-dc4c19395642-image.png

And to confirm which version of windows I am on, I will share excerpts from my Notepad++ ?-menu’s Debug Info:

Notepad++ v8.8.8 (64-bit) Build time: Nov 16 2025 - 20:55:01 Scintilla/Lexilla included: 5.5.7/5.4.5 Boost Regex included: 1_85 Path: C:\Program Files\Notepad++\notepad++.exe ... OS Name: Windows 11 Home (64-bit) OS Version: 24H2 OS Build: 26100.7171 ...

So these instructions do work for Windows 11.

But this is all generic Windows OS behavior, so your favorite search engine and a little bit of effort on your part should have been able to come up with the same. This advice is completely tangential to Notepad++, and the answer would be the same whether you installed Notepad++ or SublimeText or any other text editor for Windows that tries to ask the OS to set it as the default editor for txt files, and didn’t like its icon.

update: and when you try any of those icons, and see how ugly they all are, including the one you chose, you will be able to revert to Notepad++'s awesome textfile icon by deleting that DefaultIcon key, and doing another refresh/logout/reboot

@guy038 said:

Forbid the Select And Find … options when the Fill Find Field with Selected Text option, in settings, is unchecked.

So really what the user should be doing in this circumstance is to use the “volatile” versions of the commands?

allow the Select Word Under Caret when Nothing Selected setting to be checked, independently of the Fill Find Field with Selected Text option. So, putting caret within any word, would still select this word and placed it in the Find what zone of the Find dialog for search

To me, if user doesn’t want to fill find with selected text, he wants it to be absolute; in other words, he never wants any filling, of any kind. But, I’m sure there would be users out there that want what you describe (learned this from past experience, about all kinds of things).

@PecZXcterJones

Thanks, I understand.

@me

I printed out a cookie recipe in NP++ and LO Writer

Try to be more explicit. I actually use LibreOffice and, until @PeterJones explicitly stated it in his response, I had no idea what you were talking about when you said “LO”.

@JuergenBelle ,

Further to what @h-jangra said, since N++ v8.8.6, you can just paste your multi-line text into the Replace, and use the Search @h-jangra suggested, and you don’t need the plugin at all…

If your replacement has parentheses () or dollar signs $, it might not work as you expect, so you might have to escape them, as described in the user manual (https://npp-user-manual.org/docs/searching/#substitutions)

@guy038

More good information. Thank you!

Barry

Hello!

I’m having a similar problem with NPP being slow to open, and I believe it’s related to the fact that I have several “draft” (unsaved) files saved, since I have the options enabled: backup and remember last session.
This has already been reported in another post:

https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/issues/14000

In my case, I have an SSD and it takes about 20 seconds to load about 200 files. So it spends about 0.1 seconds per file.

I did some tests using Process Monitor, as shown in the image below.

notepad.png

In this case, it seems that NPP keeps trying to create files in the “Program Files” folder, but it gives a “NAME NOT FOUND” error.
After that, it goes to the “AppData/Roaming…” folder where the backup files are located.

In short, based on this result, does anyone have any idea how to try to solve this delay, perhaps caused by failures or repeated attempts to read/write the backup files?

@Alan, listen to @PeterJones when he says to scan your computer for viruses. TextShaping.dll is commonly used in DLL sideloading exploits, and if your executables are trying to call it when it resides in a place it doesn’t belong (your Notepad++ directory), then there’s a good chance your computer has been hacked.

That doesn’t mean you should freak out just yet, just take some steps to ensure that you’re not hacked.

All the gup.exe does is to check if there is a newer version than specified by the string input parameter is available. It does not handle the update itself. You would have to code it for yourself.

For example like this in Powershell 5.1 for the 64bit version of Notepad++.

[string]$ScriptFolder = $PSCommandPath | Split-Path -Parent $Notepad = Get-ItemProperty -LiteralPath 'HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Notepad++' $InstalledVersion = $Notepad.DisplayVersion $UpdateCheck = Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "https://notepad-plus-plus.org/update/getDownloadUrl.php?version=$InstalledVersion" $UpdateCheckAnswer = ([xml]$UpdateCheck.Content).GUP if ($UpdateCheckAnswer.NeedToBeUpdated -eq 'yes') { $Filename = $UpdateCheckAnswer.Location.Split('/')[-1] Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $UpdateCheckAnswer.Location -OutFile "$ScriptFolder\$Filename" & "$ScriptFolder\$Filename" '/S /closeRunningNpp' }

Hi everyone!

I have some good news and bad news.

The good news is that I’ve finished WebEdit 2.9, which includes several new features: multi-select support, tag recommendations, quick tag addition/editing, and a few other minor upgrades.

The bad news is that I’ve actually finished all the essential features I wanted to implement, so I’m not planning any further developments for the time being. Of course, you can still report bugs/issues and even make minor development suggestions, but the goal remains to keep the plugin fast, lightweight and easy to use.

The overview of the (new) features is also available on the module’s main page: https://github.com/Krazal/WebEdit

What’s next: when I have time, I’d like to return to my own plugin, because it has been full of bugs for months (not my fault!). ^^’

Thank you for letting me contribute to this plugin, which I hope others will find just as great and useful as me!

@James-Burke-0 ,
In addition to what @PeterJones has explained, the only other thing you could do, is bring up dBASEPlus in the Language->User Defined Language->Define your language...User language drop down box, and then `Save As’ and give it a new name.

At that point, you can play with the settings, keywords, etc… all you want in your own named UDL. Because of the way the entire UDL ecosystem works, however, you’ll lose the ability to use the autoComplete file and the functionList file as well, because of their links to the UDL’s file names that those work with, as well as the overrideMap.xml linkage file, but you’d have JUST the UDL to adjust to your likings and then when you’re satisfied, you could go back to the original dBASEPlus UDL and put the changes that you want into the Dialog boxes for the language and then do as @PeterJones says, and just close and reopen the editor and your changes will be applied to the intalled dBASEPlus UDL definition.

If you don’t need the Function List or Auto Complete capability, you can just use your newly named version of the dBASEPlus UDL to view and edit dBASE specific files.

Just in case this is what you meant you wanted to do, to customize the dBASEPlus UDL without losing the original functionality of the original package. I hope this helps.

@Jerry-Scannell said in backward search doesn't work any longer:

All of a sudden searching backwards through a file doesn’t work and I have to have proper case for strings I am searching. Does anyone know about this? Is it a setting that has changed for some reason? I am using version 8.7.5 if that helps.
Thanks in advance,
Paul

That setting hasn’t changed since 2020 (v7.8.7).

If you are in Regular Expression search mode, you cannot do backward search, unless you have followed the User Manual instructions (https://npp-user-manual.org/docs/preferences/#preferences-for-advanced-users) to set the regexBackward4PowerUser attribute in the xml config file, and restarted N++.

But, as I said, this is nothing new. So a “sudden change” presumably was you choosing Regular Expression mode.

Thank you guys all so very much, now that I know that it’s a GVAS file, I’ll chase down that lead and try to get somewhere!!!

@Pieter-Hoeben

You probably have the “Search Mode” set to “Regular expression”. Change it to “Normal”.

@James-Burke-0 said in Avoiding Tabbed Spaces:

Is there a toggle for NPP to NOT insert tabbed spaces at the beginning of a line? Somewhere in Preferences, perhaps?

You probably want Settings | Preferences… | Indentation | Indent using: Space character(s).

@mpheath

I had to save the UDL with and it worked very well, thank you very much!