[New Plugin] Line Number Highlight — VS Code-style active line number for Notepad++

VitalSkib

Hi everyone,
I’ve built a small plugin that brings one nice VS Code small features to Notepad++: highlighted active line number.
The active line number is shown in a bright color, all other line numbers are dimmed — making it instantly clear where you are in the file without any distraction.

Features:

Active line number highlighted, inactive ones dimmed
Automatically adapts to Notepad++ dark and light themes
Separate colors remembered for each theme independently
Colors fully customizable via Settings dialog (pick any color you like)
No timers, no background threads — negligible performance impact

Default colors match VS Code’s Dark Modern theme (#CCCCCC active / #6E7681 inactive).

alt text

Download & source: GitHub

Installation: Download LineNumberHighlight.dll from the Releases page, place it in:
C:\Program Files\Notepad++\plugins\LineNumberHighlight\
and restart Notepad++.

Built with C++, no runtime dependencies. Tested on Notepad++ v8.9.2 / Windows 11.

Free to use, provided as-is. Feedback welcome!

Vitalii Dovgan

An interesting idea and serious knowledge of WinAPI!
I’d propose to replace all the ANSI versions of the functions in the code (such as GetEnvironmentVariableA, GetClassNameA, CreateWindowExA and so on and so forth) with their corresponding Unicode versions.
Also I’d replace all the macros such as SendMessage with the explicit usage of the corresponding Unicode functions such as SendMessageW.
Here is why it is important. Today’s Notepad++ is internally a Unicode application, and the usage of ANSI functions in it, especially when we are talking about SendMessage and GUI-related things, potentially may introduce problems with file paths that contain Unicode characters and even with proper rendering of Unicode text in the UI.