Jump List not being added to

rednoise0

I’ve been using the 32-bit version of Notepad++ for many years with few or no problems. It’s one of my most-used utilities. A few days ago I “sidegraded” to the 64-bit version, for no particular reason except to see what would happen. All’s well except one thing: the pinned icon on Windows’ Task Bar is no longer accumulating file names on its jump list. Is this a known problem, or is it a setting I missed, or something peculiar to my computers? This is on a Windows 10 and Windows 11 machine.

debug info:

Notepad++ v8.9.6 (64-bit)
Build time: May 19 2026 - 16:20:38
Scintilla/Lexilla included: 5.6.2/5.4.9
Boost Regex included: 1_90
pugixml included: 1.15
nlohmann JSON included: 3.12.0
Path: C:\Program Files\Notepad++\notepad++.exe
Command Line:
Admin mode: OFF
Local Conf mode: OFF
Cloud Config: OFF
WinGUp: present
disableNppAutoUpdate.xml: absent
Periodic Backup: ON
Placeholders: ON
Scintilla Rendering Mode: SC_TECHNOLOGY_DEFAULT (0)
Multi-instance Mode: monoInst
asNotepad: OFF
File Status Auto-Detection: cdEnabledNew (for current file/tab only)
Dark Mode: OFF
Display Info:
primary monitor: 1366x768, scaling 100%
visible monitors count: 1
installed Display Class adapters:
0001: Description - Intel® HD Graphics 620
0001: DriverVersion - 27.20.100.9664
OS Name: Windows 10 Home (64-bit)
OS Version: 22H2
OS Build: 19045.6466
Current ANSI codepage: 1252
Plugins:
DSpellCheck (1.5)
HTMLTag (1.6)
MarkdownViewerPlusPlus (0.8.2)
mimeTools (3.1)
NppConverter (4.7)
NppExport (0.4)
NppSnippets (1.7.1)
NppTextFX (2.0.3)
QuickText (0.2.5.1)

rednoise0

Does nobody have any thoughts about this? I’m about ready to back down to the 32-bit version just to get my jump list back, which I find very helpful.

If the 64-bit version breaks the jump list feature, I would consider that a bug.

PeterJones

@rednoise0 ,

It works with 64-bit for me. I think jump list is mostly in the Windows side of things, so my guess is it’s on the OS’s end, maybe in the way you uninstalled vs installed, or some such.

Update:

You might want to read the results of recent research I did in this jump list related issue in the repo:
https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/issues/17948#issuecomment-4246404470

It should give you some things to look for to figure out if Windows is trying to update the jump list or not

rednoise0

@PeterJones This gives me some good food for thought. It seems plausible that Windows is confused about Application ID between the 32-bit vs. the 64-bit versions. Not sure how to fix it, but identifying the problem would be a step in the right direction. The Nirsoft utility should help.

On one of the two computers that I went from 32- to 64-, I went back to 32- by uninstalling 64- then reinstalling 32-, keeping my AppData preferences folder. The Jump List started working again. Not sure of the precise significance of that but it feels related.

Thank you for your thoughts. At least I know it should be possible.

PeterJones

@rednoise0 ,

I actually did a bit of searching after making the updates to my post yesterday, but wasn’t in a position to make a followup post (and forgot to today, until your reply): Some sites indicate that just creating the pin-to-taskbar for an app should be enough to initiate it…

So maybe, if you edited the old pin rather than creating a new pin, then Windows didn’t update the link between that pin and the underlying application ID. Thus, you might want to try something as simple as unpinning from your taskbar, then create a new pin from the 64-bit installation. That might be enough to kick Windows and get it to start properly tracking Notepad++ files again.

rednoise0

I’ve played with this a bit more and found something interesting. I installed NPP-64 on a virgin Windows 10 system (actually, a Virtualbox VM) that has never had any version of NPP on it before. The Jump list is not working. Furthermore, it is not listed in JumpListsView, and there appears to have been no file created in \AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\AutomaticDestinations\ .

This makes me wonder if you have that file and a working jump list because you have had NPP-64 installed for a while, through several version, and that there is something about new or recent versions that doesn’t register itself with Windows properly.

I plan to go back and install the latest NPP 32-bit on a virgin Windows 10 VM and see what happens. I’ll report back here, but I’m tired of fooling around with this for now. In the meantime, I’ve reverted my working desktops and laptops to the (latest, 8.9.6.1) 32-bit version and all my jump lists are back.

PeterJones

@rednoise0 said:

This makes me wonder if you have that file and a working jump list because you have had NPP-64 installed for a while, through several version,

Doubtful. In my experiments which led to my previous post, I got Win 11 to successfully add the jump lists for two or three different portable versions of Notepad++ (at least one 32-bit, at least one 64-bit) by doing “Open with” and browsing to the portable executables. When I pinned those to the task bar, their Jump Lists were visible.

The Jump list is not working. Furthermore, it is not listed in JumpListsView, and there appears to have been no file created in \AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\AutomaticDestinations\ .

Remember, Windows OS doesn’t add to Jump Lists unless you are opening the file through Explorer (either by double-click, or by right-click-open-with). It does not add to the Jump List if you File>Open from inside the app. And it doesn’t add to the Jump List if you drag from Explorer into the open app.

that there is something about new or recent versions that doesn’t register itself with Windows properly.

As far as I can tell, Notepad++ doesn’t actually do any of the fancy “registering” for Windows’ Jump Lists. It just relies on the OS’s built-in jumplist handling. Given that I was able to get multiple separate jumplists for N++, depending on which pinned executable I was OpenWith, I think I’ve confirmed that (since I would think that it would share a jumplist if it’s registered a consistent name).

(I’ll probably play at some point with creating a helloworld.exe and pinning it, and see that I can get a jumplist from a brand-new app… but that won’t be until tomorrow at the earliest.)

PeterJones

@rednoise0 ,

I just ran an easy quick experiment: I had a random executable which had never been pinned, never been used for Open With or as the file extension handler (and doesn’t do anything special when used to “open” a file, through blah.exe path\to\file.txt; the source code of that executable is tiny, and does not do any registration of Jump Lists or anything; it is a dead-simple program that has nothing to do with file access). I then dragged it to the taskbar to pin it. Then I right-click on file.txt and did Open With, browsed to the exe that I pinned, and chose “just once”. After doing that, I right-clicked on the pin, and file.txt was in its jumplist.

It has nothing to do with “registering” it with the OS. It has nothing to do with whether it’s been there a long time or not.

Further, I had a Win10 virtual machine, which had never had a Notepad++ jumplist before. I made sure Notepad++ was pinned, confirmed there was no list; then right clicked on a textfile, chose Open With and browsed to notepad++.exe (64bit), it opened the file with Notepad++, then when I looked at the jumplist, the textfile was listed.