Notepad++ open in new instance because I use multiple desktops

Brent Riggs

I need notepad++ t open in a separate instance each time I click the taskbar icon

I use multiple desktops in Windows 11, and currently if I click Notepad++ from a desktop, it jumps to the desktop where it is already open…

I need to have Notepad++ opened and separate on each desktop as I used it for different projects on different desktops…

PeterJones

@Brent-Riggs ,

Notepad++ doesn’t have that feature, though you could read the FAQ to see where feature requests go.

Alternatives / workarounds:

Always Open New Instance option: might be too far in the multi-instance direction, but it would accomplish your goal
use Open Session in New Instance option, and a separate session file for each of your projects
have shortcuts on your desktop with the -multiInst option, and use that to start your new instance on each desktop
use Move To New Instance and then move that instance to the right desktop

References:

Alan Kilborn

I’m sure there are several open issue requests for multiple desktop support.
Please seek them out and add your thoughts to one or more of them, rather than creating a new (basically duplicate) issue.

Aryan Firouzian

One silly solution would be to drag a tab out off the notepad++ window, and then drag it to other desktop. That way you have two different notepad++ instances in different desktops

ElectroLund

I agree, would be an excellent feature. I have the same workflow: multiple Win10 desktops, have NP++ open in lots of them, opening new text files throws me over there.

But changing NP++ behavior to open new instances each time would not work for me either, as I have scripts that I run which open mutliple files that I do want grouped together in one instance of NP++.

An easy solution to me would be a command line switch that forces the opening of a file into a new NP++ instance. Then I could chose which files to start a new one.

PeterJones

@ElectroLund said in Notepad++ open in new instance because I use multiple desktops:

An easy solution to me would be a command line switch that forces the opening of a file into a new NP++ instance. Then I could chose which files to start a new one.

you mean like the already-existing -multiInst option, which does exactly that?

(Though if you do use -multiInst, I recommend also using -nosession, otherwise it will open your whole existing session plus the new file(s) in the new instance)

so if you use notepad++ -nosession -multiInst a.txt b.txt c.txt , it will open those three files to a single new instance, separate from any notepad++ instance already running.

I believe this accomplishes your goal (though maybe not the original poster’s goal)

mkupper

@PeterJones Something I have thought about on and and off but never put down on paper to see if there are logic flaws is a mechanism for people to define instances using a keyword that’s on the command line.

Let’s say I have three projects, apple, banana, and strawberry.

If I run Notepad++.exe -instance apple then Notepad++ will look to see if there is already a copy of Notepad++.exe running that was started using -instance apple and if so passes the command line off to that running instance.

This would allow for moving instances to different desktops or monitors.

I have not thought through the session.xml file but suspect the safe course would be for Notepad++ to create and maintain a session-apple.xml file.

If the config.xml file is also per-instance then you can park the instance on a desktop or monitor and that will get saved to config-apple.xml.

Instances would be much like running several portable copies but with the benefit of being able to define which instance I want to open a file in when using the command line.

notdodgeball

what you describe seems to me what is already somewhat possible with the openSession parameter, using it like:

notepad++.exe -multiInst -openSession apple.xml

then managing those instances as sessions (apple.xml, banana.xml, strawberry.xml)

Righ now the problem is that, independently of the opened session, when you close notepad++, session.xml file is updated (and only this session).

So if you have multiple instances, then each one will update session.xml upon closing.

This disregard of openSession I never fully understood, as to me it should behave much like you just described. And although I understand it’s not completely useless the way it works now, it could be much more.

In this regard, this -instance parameter you speak of could be a alias (combined flag) for -multiInst -openSession with the opened session being “saved”. I assume the monitor it was last used with can also be saved.

PeterJones

@mkupper,

If the config.xml file is also per-instance then you can park the instance on a desktop or monitor and that will get saved to config-apple.xml.

Even better: in the multi-instance settings, there could be an “embed config in non-default session file” checkbox, and if that’s checked, then when you are dealing with a non-sessions.xml session, it could store that session’s configuration in the same file as the rest of the session; that way, the configuration is tightly coupled to the session itself (and it would solve the problem of having to separately track an alternate-config.xml location). Not that I think such a feature request would be implemented, but I think it’s a good idea. ;-)

@notdodgeball ,

This disregard of openSession I never fully understood, as to me it should behave much like you just described

I concur. Has anyone ever asked for (specifically) not touching sessions.xml when -openSession/File > Load Session… is active?

mkupper

@notdodgeball said in Notepad++ open in new instance because I use multiple desktops:

This disregard of openSession I never fully understood, as to me it should behave much like you just described.

I regularly use, or perhaps abuse, -openSession. A whie back I created a batch file, nplist.bat, that extracts file paths from a text file and generates a session.xml file. It then runs Notepad++.exe with -openSession. While I could have just run Notepad++.exe and passed the file names directly to it. I created nplist.bat because I wanted something that allowed me to open thousands of files at once. I did not think thousands of files would fit on the command line and was not comfortable with starting Notepad++.exe thousands of times and having those pass the file name on to the running copy of Notepad++.exe.

Notepad++ must already have some sort of inter-process communication (IPC) that allows a newly loaded copy of Notepad++.exe to tell the main running instance of Notepad+exe to come to the foreground and to open one or more files.

That means I should be able to create an run-npp.exe that implements the -instance logic I proposed earlier. The easiest way to define and separate instances of Notepad++ would be to use portable copies. I’d put them in

c:\npp\apple\Notepad++.exe
c:\npp\banana\Notepad++.exe
c:\npp\strawberry\Notepad++.exe

This allows each instance of Notepad++ to live in its own world. This assumes that whatever IPC Notepad++ uses is something that allows for multiple copies of the .exe to run at the same time and for an external app to talk to them. If, for example, Notepad++ is using a named pipe with a fixed name then only one copy can own the pipe.

What want is the ability to tell an already running instance of Notepad++.exe to open a file. For example, I want to open fruit.txt in Notepad++ and want to use the banana instance of Notepad++.exe to view or work with this file.