Sudden issue with increasing cursor offset proportional to column
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Suddenly, literally overnight, and after years of using it with no problems at all, Notepad++ has developed a problem in which the cursor becomes right-offset from the insertion point proportionally to its left-to-right position.
If I start typing a line, the cursor initially sits directly at the insertion point.
By column 20 or so, the cursor appears to be one space past it.
By column 30-ish it’s two spaces ahead, and so on, so that by column 80-90 it’s 5 or 6 spaces beyond where I’m typing.
This also affects double-clicking to highlight all instances of a word - I have to double-click where Notepad++ thinks the word is based on that offset, and then the highlights appear in the wrong place at their increasing offsets instead of where the words are displayed.
And, editing as well of course - I’m clicking in a word to edit it, and the characters I type are appearing midway-through the word to the left.
It’s as though NP++ is suddenly miscalculating character width, but ttbomk I’ve done nothing to change that - have installed no fonts or other software, etc.
I wondered if it was related to the file I’d opened (maybe control characters in it or something like that), but it’s also the case for all new and existing files.
I was using v8.4.6 when this started happening. Have just upgraded to latest, but no change.
Any thoughts on how to solve it?
Debug info:
Notepad++ v8.8.1 (64-bit)
Build time : May 3 2025 - 18:41:09
Scintilla/Lexilla included : 5.5.6/5.4.4
Boost Regex included : 1_85
Path : C:\Program Files\Notepad++\notepad++.exe
Command Line : “C:\Program Files\Notepad++\change.log”
Admin mode : OFF
Local Conf mode : OFF
Cloud Config : OFF
Periodic Backup : ON
Placeholders : OFF
Scintilla Rendering Mode : SC_TECHNOLOGY_DEFAULT (0)
Multi-instance Mode : monoInst
File Status Auto-Detection : cdEnabledNew (for current file/tab only)
Dark Mode : OFF
OS Name : Windows 10 Pro (64-bit)
OS Version : 22H2
OS Build : 19045.6332
Current ANSI codepage : 1252
Plugins :
ComparePlugin (2.0.2)
HexEditor (0.9.12)
JSMinNPP (1.1901.2)
mimeTools (3.1)
NppConverter (4.6)
NppExport (0.4)
XMLTools (3.1.1.13) -
I have never seen that happen. However, I know that sometimes video driver updates can cause funny things to happen (it’s been known to happen in the past). Maybe your video card drivers were automatically updated.
Other than that: v8.8.1 isn’t actually the latest – right now, the ?-menu’s Update Notepad++ should tell you that v8.8.5 is available for update (because “auto-update” has been triggered for it), and if you wanted to manually install, the downloads page actually has v8.8.6, which should hopefully be triggered for auto-update after the one-week safety delay, per the announcement.
So i suggest checking to see if your video drivers did update, and see if maybe v8.8.5 or v8.8.6 work better for you. Other than that, I’m not sure what to suggest.
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One experiment I would try would be to go to Settings | Preferences… | MISC and change the rendering mode drop down from GDI (most compatible) to Direct Write (default), then close Notepad++, start it again and see if anything is different.
It might not help, but it’s worth a try to see if that changes things.
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Thanks for the replies both.
@Coises that seems to have solved it! - all is good again after switching to Direct Write - many thanks!
I haven’t updated video drivers, but Win10 installed a couple of updates at some point today (KB5065429 and KB5065957) - maybe there was a related change there somewhere.
