• Admin mode changes

    General Discussion
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    PeterJonesP

    @Xan-Kun ,

    Yes, Notepad++ drastically improved the behavior when trying to save admin-only files in v8.8.6 in October.

    Specifically, in older versions (v8.8.5 and earlier), when it would make you restart Notepad++, there are two conditions:

    If you had left the option to save the session snapshot with periodic “backup” enabled, then your changes would be preserved in the periodic “backup”, and when it restarted as Admin (after Windows OS does a UAC prompt, unless you have UAC prompting off), then it would be able to save them. And then you’d accidentally leave it running as Admin, and could accidentally ovewrite any file you wanted, and might mess up your settings. So, a great situation to be in. But if you had disabled the periodic backup, like many do (see our backup FAQ for reasons why), then when Notepad++ asked if you wanted to restart, you would have to Ctrl+A Ctrl+C to copy all the changes before asking the question it’s currently prompting you for, then then restart Notepad++ (*: and not prompt you about unsaved changes; so if you didn’t do the copy-all already, you just lost minutes or hours of changes; wheee!!!), then see that the file is back to the original (because it couldn’t be saved), and then have to paste in your changes (hoping you hadn’t accidentally hit Ctrl+C on anything in the meantime, losing your file changes), and then do the save. And then you would need to remember to exit Notepad++ and manually restart it (because Notepad++ doesn’t have a “restart in normal mode” button or menu entry when you’re running as Admin) to go back to normal editing.

    And, in v8.8.6 and newer: You would edit a file. When you go to hit save, Notepad++ asks Windows OS for permission to write to the protected file. If you have UAC enabled, then Windows OS will do the UAC prompt to let you know it’s writing to a protected file, and then do it; if you have UAC disabled, then Windows checks if your user is allowed to elevate without asking, and if it does, it automatically elevates and allows Notepad++ to save. But either way, after that save, Notepad++ is back to the normal permissions, and there is no chance you will forget to switch out of Admin mode and/or get your config files messed up. So much better situation.

    Re-enabling the Windows OS UAC prompts (that you disabled at some point) would get you the level of “don’t accidentally save this Admin file” protection you want, without ruining the improvement for everyone who runs without periodic backup or doesn’t want to risk corrupting their config files and doesn’t want to ruin dragging a file from Windows Explorer into Notepad++ because Notepad++ was accidentally left in Admin mode. (It’s also best practice for Windows security. If you are running with your main user who can be elevated without Windows doing a UAC prompt, then as soon as any malware gets on your system, even if it’s only running as your “normal” user, it can access every file on your drive by just telling Windows “but I’m user Xan-Kun, so of course I’ll play nice”. So you are opening yourself to a huge security risk by running without Windows UAC prompts.)

    The change was intentional. The change makes the software better. As a fellow user of Notepad++, I don’t see a good reason to go back to pre-8.8.6 behavior.

  • 1 Votes
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    fml2F

    Thank you all for the great proposals and for showing what is possible in NP++. However, I find the solution (to the problem I rarely have) a bit too complicated. In the cases I need wrapping at a specific position I’d hence rather use the proposal of @Coises with a side panel. Or resize the window.

  • Monokai and JS versão 8.9.1

    Notepad++ & Plugin Development
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    Anderson NascimentoA

    @PeterJones I managed to do it, I uninstalled it again and when it asked about settings, I answered no, upon startup it was like a completely new installation.Screenshot_1.png nnn.png
    When I started up, I changed the theme and it worked, thank you very much for the tips.

  • FAQ: February Security Announcement

    Pinned until 3/1/26, 9:17 PM Locked Security
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    PeterJonesP

    Updates with new clarifications from this comment:

    Target Information

    Kaspersky only saw evidence of victims IP addresses in Vietnam, El Salvador, Australia and the Philippines, and noted, “We observed three different infection chains overall, designed to attack about a dozen machines…”.

    Thus, it wasn’t just “targeted” – out of all the update attempts that would have happened during the June to December timeframe, it appears there were only a dozen victims: everyone else got a normal, unaffected update, with no malicious payload.

    Obvious Side-effect: Notepad++ Not Actually Updated after “Update”

    When the attackers redirected victims, the victims got “updaters” which did nothing to notepad++.exe. If every time that automatic updates ran, you saw Notepad++ actually updated, you were not one of the victims.

    In case the user runs Notepad++ updater, if the version remains exactly the same after the attempted update, the user can check %LOCALAPPDATA%\Notepad++\log\securityError.log to see what happened & report it.

  • 0 Votes
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    PeterJonesP

    @Fred-Morant said in "Search result" are not more stacked,:

    Every new search replaced the previous one,

    In the Search Results panel, Right Click, then uncheckmark “Purge for every search”

    f9b80104-3491-4a95-9a71-8cc5b64a683d-image.png
    =>
    534dcf2f-da9e-4350-82ff-673e4afd1558-image.png

  • 0 Votes
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    PeterJonesP

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

    @PeterJones ,

    This solution requires a change in config.xml,

    As described in the user manual, yes.

    regexBackward4PowerUser at yes seems to be not an accepted value for my version V8.9.1.

    Nope. Works just fine for me in v8.9.1. My guess is you used your active Notepad++ to edit config.xml. But Notepad++ overwrites config.xml when it exits, so you lost your change. The user manual has a few paragraphs at Config Files Details > Editing Configuration Files which explains how to edit most of the Notepad++ configuration files, and then explains the workaround for the config.xml exception.

    Until you properly edit and save the config.xml, Notepad++ will not see your regexBackward4PowerUser="yes"

    if config.xml is detected with value not conformed at start then config.xml is not considered and default parameters are used,
    if config.xml is not conformed then config.xml is rewritten at close,

    Correct. That’s described in more detail in the user manual, where I just linked you.

    Reason for considering regexBackward4PowerUser at yes as not a accepted value :
    going backward with a regex requires more computation than going forward, and that value is not accepted in V8.9.1,

    Wrong. Don’t believe AI hallucinations. It has nothing to do with computation. Regular expressions parse characters in byte order, and when they do that but go backwards through the bytes for the start of the match, there are quirks that users don’t expect; the Developer got tired of people reporting bugs in the regex engine because they didn’t understand the implications of how backward mode interacts with regular expression parsing, so turned it off by default, but gave power users the ability to turn it back on. That ability has not been taken away, despite the lies the AI is telling you.

    Do you confirm ?

    I confirm it’s nonsense from AI that just says the most likely next words based on context. “Most likely” does not equal “true”.

  • 0 Votes
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    guy038G

    Hello, @mark-boonie and All,

    I said in this post that we can translate the regex’s logic to :

    What_I_do_not_want(*SKIP)(*F)|What_I_want. See also the excellent article, on this topic, at https://www.rexegg.com/backtracking-control-verbs.php#skipfail !

    But, regarding your present example, @mark-boonie, I suppose that we should invert the logic and tell :

    What_I_want_to_keep(*SKIP)(*F)|What_I_want_to_delete

    This means that any multi-lines block, with delimiters Block start and Block end containing the string 80     00010000 is not considered ( text is skipped ) and that any single line contents, with its line-break, due to the (?-s) modifier, must be deleted

    Note that the use of the Backtracking Control Verbs (*SKIP) and (*F) is not mandatory at all ! we could have used this syntax, instead, for similar results :

    SEARCH (?s)^\*Block start\h*((?!\*Block start).)+?80 00010000.+?^\*Block end\h*\R?|(?-s)^.*\R?

    REPLACE (?1$0)

    We simply change the non-capturing group (?:(?!\*Block start).)+? into a capturing group ((?!\*Block start).)+?

    We tell that, in replacement, we must rewrite any block entirely ( $0 ), if the group 1 exists, thus the (?1$0) syntax

    And, as there is no colon char and text after (?1$0, nothing must be taken in account if the group 1 is absent, which is the case in the (?-s)^.*\R? part !

    Best regards,

    guy038

  • 0 Votes
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    David Smith 2D

    This issue has been fixed:
    I did the following. As I use a inline style sheet I created a “css color.css” file in Notepad++. Just a blank page that I can do the following:

    I can now paste my HTMLPad 2025 css code into Notepad++ with the colors I changed under Settings> Style Configurator.

    I also created a “html-colors.html” blank file and I can copy the html code with colors that Notepad++ provides that has been updated in the Style Configurator.

    Next I highlight the text then go to “Plugins” on the toolbar then “NppExport” then “Copy all formats to clipboard”.

    I can now paste in the html/css code into Word with the colors I want.

    I still cannot create a style in Word 2024 with colors as I suspect it would be too complicated for Word to figure what parts the different text it should color.

  • autoupdater and connection temp.sh

    Security
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    PeterJonesP

    @Martin-1 said in autoupdater and connection temp.sh:

    @PeterJones That is what i meant. I don’t understand what is being said in those links or what is being said above. hence the repeat of my questions.

    Then ask for clarification, rather than ask the same thing over and over.

    Besides, the https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/clarification-security-incident/ link that @donho most recently posted seems pretty clear to me:

    Who Was Targeted?

    This was a highly selective attack by a state-sponsored group targeting specific high-value organizations. Security researchers confirmed that the vast majority of Notepad++ users were never affected - attackers filtered victims based on strategic value, not random distribution.

    For most users: Simply updating to the latest version is sufficient.

    If you are a member of a a high-value organization, then you need to find someone on your IT team who does understand all the technical details. (If you are unsure whether your organization would be considered “high value”, then it wouldn’t be.) If you are not, then you are part of the “for most users” group. And those instructions seem quite clear to me: manually update to v8.9.1.

  • Session migration

    General Discussion
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    PeterJonesP

    @Magic-Mugs ,

    Assuming all your open files are real files, and all in the exact same folders on old and new machine, then just copy over %AppData%\Notepad++\session.xml

    If some of your files are the unsaved new # tabs, you will also need to copy over everything in %AppData%\Notepad++\backup\

    But if you want all the same settings from your old to your new, just copy over everything from %AppData%\Notepad++\

  • 0 Votes
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    PeterJonesP

    @nikkinisly ,

    The thing truly named “Plugin Manager” was last compatible with Notepad++ in v7.5.9 from October 2019. Had you really not updated since then?

    Or are you talking about Plugins Admin? That’s the builtin replacement since v7.6 in November 2019

    And it’s still in v8.9.1:
    0e15144b-967e-42d8-a505-a19330607d00-image.png

    My guess is that you deleted gup.exe and/or other of the content in the updater folder, or the plugin list DLL. To find out:

    Exit Notepad++ Perform steps 1-3 for each of the following files List of files C:\Program Files\Notepad++\notepad++.exe C:\Program Files\Notepad++\plugins\Config\nppPluginList.dll C:\Program Files\Notepad++\updater\GUP.exe C:\Program Files\Notepad++\updater\libcurl.dll If any of those files are missing, you will need to reinstall, making sure to include the auto-updater and Plugins Admin, because all of those files are required for Plugins Admin to work Steps Right click on the file and choose Properties Look to see if it still has the Unblock checkbox If it does, checkmark it, then click Apply / OK

    here is an example of a GUP.exe that still has the mark of the web:
    9baed526-5a1a-4497-a75b-1acdc23f3b85-image.png

    After making sure the Mark of the Web is gone from all those files, then restart Notepad++, and Plugins Admin should be there.

  • 0 Votes
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    PeterJonesP

    @PeterJones said in Is There a Way to Prevent Pasted Text from Spreading Out with Rows of Spaces?:

    implementing it in PythonScript today

    Thankfully, I found an old script which did something related, which was easy to update.

    # encoding=utf-8 """in response to https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/topic/27385/ This will paste the CF_TEXT plaintext from the clipboard, but will convert any series of newline characters into a single space before doing the paste. Because this uses .insertText() instead of putting the modified text back into the clipboard and doing .paste(), it should avoid clobbering the clipboard. (based on @alan-kilborn's clipboard script here: <https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/post/97132>) """ from Npp import * try: editor3h # third editor, hidden except NameError: editor3h = notepad.createScintilla() def get_clipboard_text_without_newlines(): retval = '' editor3h.clearAll() editor3h.paste() if editor3h.getLength() > 0: editor3h.rereplace(r'[\r\n]+', ' ') # replace all newline seqeuences with a single space retval = editor3h.getText() return retval editor.beginUndoAction() editor.insertText(editor.getCurrentPos(), get_clipboard_text_without_newlines()) editor.endUndoAction()

    This has been tested in the PythonScript 3 plugin. The PythonScript FAQ explains how to install PythonScript plugin, and how to run a script using PythonScript plugin, and even how to assign a keyboard shortcut to the script. Make sure you follow the instructions for PythonScript 3, not PythonScript 2 (as I have not tested under the older plugin syntax, though it will likely work there)

  • Notepad++ v8.9.1 Release

    Pinned Announcements
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    PeterJonesP

    @mpheath said in Notepad++ v8.9.1 Release:

    I am unsure what you fixed.

    @mpheath, the user had outdated themes, which didn’t have the KEY style for either Langage:INI or Language:Properties. When v8.9.1 brought in all those style entries for the INI and Properties lexers, it began properly formatting those styles rather than ignoring those styles that weren’t defined in the themes. This was the intention of the new style-updating feature: it is intended to bring all themes up-to-date, so that they can format all the styles that users have not been seeing for years (for some, it’s a decade or more of missing syntax highlighting).

    @Drift91: As with all styles, if you don’t like the formatting that is chosen by default for a given style, you are free to change it for yourself. You go to Settings > Style Configurator > Language: INI or Language: Properties, select Style: KEY and change the Italic checkbox, as shown here for INI: 4b2d19b9-b707-4bc0-a668-3b1acb7041c8-image.png

  • Strange highlighting in PHP files

    General Discussion
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    Nazar HotsaN

    Thank you! Problem solved.

  • 0 Votes
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    EkopalypseE

    @Jay-S

    I replied here.

  • 1 Votes
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    shane knappS

    @David-Brown i came here to let you know that my receipt had what appears to be his email address on it (which i’ve blocked out here for privacy):

    2a1a9747-0e42-4d15-80d0-eb4737ffabd4-image.png

    seems legit to me, but i can’t know for sure. :)

  • 0 Votes
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    PeterJonesP

    @Ilhan-Yumer ,

    The developer does not read most posts in this Forum. If you would like to suggest such a move to the developer, I would recommend creating a new Issue at GitHub requesting it (https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/issues).

  • Chinese compromise began as early as NP++ v8.6.9

    Locked Security
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    PeterJonesP

    Future readers: if you want more information for the context of this discussion, See the FAQ, which has the best summary I can make, as of 2026-Feb-04; if new information is available, the FAQ will be updated. ALL followups/discussions must go in Topic: autoupdater and connection to temp.sh. This tangent is LOCKED.

  • I am very confused about the Notepad++ security issue

    Locked Security
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    PeterJonesP

    See the FAQ, which has the best summary I can make, as of 2026-Feb-04; if new information is available, the FAQ will be updated. ALL followups/discussions must go in Topic: autoupdater and connection to temp.sh. This tangent is LOCKED.

  • 1 Votes
    3 Posts
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    PeterJonesP

    See the FAQ, which has the best summary I can make, as of 2026-Feb-04; if new information is available, the FAQ will be updated. ALL followups/discussions must go in Topic: autoupdater and connection to temp.sh. This tangent is LOCKED.