[kyriakos]

I use notepad++ on windows and have open all the time. Any more I want to write down I open a new tab. Notepad++ keeps the tabs even if not saved and automatically reopens them next time you start it. Combined with search in open files feature it makes it extremely useful.

[AstroJetson]

I love notepad++ and use it a lot when I need raw text.

I do like WordPad since it will do fonts, embedded pictures, etc. I really hate that MS is moving things to the cloud. I'm often in places that don't have wifi/cell coverage so getting to the cloud is impossible.

[knaik94]

I use the autosave and take notes plugin in notepad++ which makes it perfect for this use case. I have it set to autosave when the window loses focus. And the take notes plugin lets me set a default filename with timestamp and save directory, which I set to my dropbox. The plugin also has an option to delete all empty text files when notepad++ is closed.

It feels as friction free as writing on a physical notepad with a paper and pencil.

[g-b-r]

Just keep in mind that at least in the old versions it had bugs that lead to occasional loss of all the autosaved files.

I don't know if they fixed them since, I haven't used it in three or four years.

[knaik94]

I've never run in to that issue in the last 10+ years of using notepad++ with these plugins. Since my autosave location is dropbox, it's automatically backed up the moment the file is saved. I've set my control+n to a new note and not an empty file. The take notes plugin doesn't rely on the built in temp auto saves.

If a file is saved and then gets corrupted for whatever reason, I can also use dropbox to grab the previous known good version. I've tested it, but I've never had to actually use it.

[Daneel_]

This situation happened to me, and just in case it helps someone I thought I’d mention that the files are all saved on the disk - just go into settings and look up the location of the temporary save directory. Open that in explorer and you’ll have all the temporary files available.

[g-b-r]

No, I meant that the "temporary" files themselves got deleted!!

There were different bugs, some deleted session.xml and some the files themselves.

I had actually found the reasons and prepared bug reports, but then had some life messes and lost the reports themselves.

Maybe I'll try to see if I can find the code again (it was plain calls to "deletefile" or something like that ended up being called by an error handler, if I'm not mistaken - it was so reckless code that I moved away from Notepad++)

[Tagbert]

Yes, BBEdit on the Mac has always done that, too. I often open a new tab and paste something in there to keep it around for some indeterminate time. BBEdit saves the temp content until I decide to close the tab or to formally save it and give it a name. It does that even when closing the app or rebooting.