Different yet similar enough to make it seem legit at first. The only "giveaway" for me was the website looking like any other vibecoded SaaS website. Not a good sign for me personally.
>> Notepad++ for macOS is maintained by Andrey Letov, who wrote the Objective-C++ Cocoa UI that replaces Notepad++'s Win32 front-end. The app is available to download from the Notepad++ website.
That is not the Notepad++ website! It's some other website. I understand that this is a fairly legitimate and professional port. But this framing is unacceptable. It's especially grating considering "Notepad++" is trademarked in France: https://data.inpi.fr/marques/FR5133202 [1]. The software is GPL but that doesn't mean you can slap the trademark on any derived codebase - legally problematic in France, but it's disrespectful worldwide. The Mac port really should have been released under a similar but clearly distinct name, and MacRumors should have been way more responsible about framing the story.
I've been aware of Bbedit but never really used it. Are there things it does better than more recent editors or is it more of a devil you know? Like a WordPerfect situation.
Yeah, that's not gonna hit. Non-native UI in an app that no Mac plain-text user asked for. I love Sublime, but TextMate was once king. There are already plenty of good options. I also love VIM for saving test to specific locations while I'm on the command line (I have an `sb` alias for Sublime but I don't want to switch away from my terminal window unless the corpus is large or complex).
As someone who is currently building a native macOS application (cross-platform actually), but haven't used macOS as my "main OS" for more than a decade, what's the most important things to make desktop applications "feel native" on macOS?
Excellent resource for general UX guidelines, some apply to cross-platform apps, some not so much. I was mainly looking for a Apple/macOS-specific guidelines, but I'm guessing they're mixed in there with everything else. Thanks though, very helpful!
The most important thing is probably to use native UI controls, either AppKit or SwiftUI, rather than Qt or other frameworks, even those that espouse the use of native controls. That will get you a lot of things for free, generally.
Don't install invasive "helpers" or login items in weird locations; don't ask for huge amounts of system permissions without an appropriate introductory flow for your application, explaining what it needs to do before trying to install or get permission for something.
Bundle your dependencies appropriately; don't go fetch weird stuff post-install, the application should be designed so that everything is already there in the bundle.
Put application data in the idiomatic locations; ~/Library/Application Support, ~/Library/Preferences, etc.
Carefully consider what keyboard shortcuts your application uses; if you use the Escape key for something, or modifier keys, make sure it does something that makes sense on the platform and doesn't conflict with other shortcuts.
Don't bundle Chromium.
Generally: Respect the user as much as possible. Things should "just work." If there's a situation where it doesn't or something feels "odd", you should do whatever you reasonably can to fix that.
That first part is a no-go, as the top concern for me is to have consistent UI across three platforms, so it won't look native, and that's a conscious choice, even with the tradeoffs.
It's a native cross-platform application, fully compiled, just one binary with a sidebar archive, so Chrome, post-install fetches and other similarly "weird" desktop experiences are already avoided :)
Thanks a lot for the extensive description of your expectations in general though, it's very helpful and I'll put it to good use!
I've been using Notepad Next, it supports leaving all your tabs open when you close the window which is the main feature I need. But I do miss the plugins.
I've always hated this about macOS. And my main laptop is a macBook Air M3 15. The majority of my friends that use macOS have no idea how to quit an app. Nearly all think closing all the windows quits it. A lot of issues with a lot of apps can be fixed by quitting them and opening them up again. I help a ton of theater techs at a local improv theater. I finally gave up with most of them and told them to just reboot as a first step to fixing issues before continuing other troubleshooting steps.
>The only difference is that the menus, dialogs, file pickers, keyboard shortcuts, and windowing all use native macOS Cocoa APIs.
Why would I want native macOS dialogs where the save as dialog can only show 32 characters on the screen at once? I use LibreOffice on Mac mostly because it allows me to use their dialogs instead of the crap macOS ones...
One big reason is sandboxing - the native dialogs can view the entire filesystem hierarchy and automatically grant access to selected resources to the calling app. Non-native dialogs are restricted to whatever the app has access to, which means you often have to give the apps Full Disk Access to make them work properly.
Fake, see Notepad++ creator's follow-up: https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/npp-trademark-infringemen...
This was on HN a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47916964
, and there it was mentioned that it is __not__ an official port and has nothing to do with the original Notepad++ author!
And domain is different than original Notepad++, now it makes sense.
Different yet similar enough to make it seem legit at first. The only "giveaway" for me was the website looking like any other vibecoded SaaS website. Not a good sign for me personally.
https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/npp-trademark-infringemen... Don Ho (original author of Notepad++) is not happy.
This story is so irresponsible.
>> Notepad++ for macOS is maintained by Andrey Letov, who wrote the Objective-C++ Cocoa UI that replaces Notepad++'s Win32 front-end. The app is available to download from the Notepad++ website.
That is not the Notepad++ website! It's some other website. I understand that this is a fairly legitimate and professional port. But this framing is unacceptable. It's especially grating considering "Notepad++" is trademarked in France: https://data.inpi.fr/marques/FR5133202 [1]. The software is GPL but that doesn't mean you can slap the trademark on any derived codebase - legally problematic in France, but it's disrespectful worldwide. The Mac port really should have been released under a similar but clearly distinct name, and MacRumors should have been way more responsible about framing the story.
[1] via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47917939
Mac graybeards everywhere are snickering knowing that most people are UNAWARE of Bbedit.
https://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/
When I was a Mac guy, I LOVED BBedit! I purchased the full-blown package.
I've been aware of Bbedit but never really used it. Are there things it does better than more recent editors or is it more of a devil you know? Like a WordPerfect situation.
Yeah, that's not gonna hit. Non-native UI in an app that no Mac plain-text user asked for. I love Sublime, but TextMate was once king. There are already plenty of good options. I also love VIM for saving test to specific locations while I'm on the command line (I have an `sb` alias for Sublime but I don't want to switch away from my terminal window unless the corpus is large or complex).
>an app that no Mac plain-text user asked for
I mean, if I got brain damage and decided to switch from Windows to OSX, I'd appreciate the option of being able to continue using Notepad++.
With that kind of brain damage, you might very well not appreciate it anymore. ;)
No, I would.
As a daily Notepad++ user for 20 years I agree, these kinds of ports to Mac make it easier for people to jump ship.
https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/npp-trademark-infringemen... Don Ho (original author of Notepad++) is not happy.
Tried it out, still doesn’t feel “native”
- cant drag a file to the dock icon to open it
- closing the window, quits the app
Didn’t test much, but I wish the team the best of luck! It’s a cool project
As someone who is currently building a native macOS application (cross-platform actually), but haven't used macOS as my "main OS" for more than a decade, what's the most important things to make desktop applications "feel native" on macOS?
Excellent documentation in Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines: https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...
Excellent resource for general UX guidelines, some apply to cross-platform apps, some not so much. I was mainly looking for a Apple/macOS-specific guidelines, but I'm guessing they're mixed in there with everything else. Thanks though, very helpful!
Use the native text objects --- in particular, this will get you emacs style editing keyboard shortcuts
Support drag-drop
Support Services --- bonus points for implementing core functionality as a Service and making it available thus
The most important thing is probably to use native UI controls, either AppKit or SwiftUI, rather than Qt or other frameworks, even those that espouse the use of native controls. That will get you a lot of things for free, generally.
Don't install invasive "helpers" or login items in weird locations; don't ask for huge amounts of system permissions without an appropriate introductory flow for your application, explaining what it needs to do before trying to install or get permission for something.
Bundle your dependencies appropriately; don't go fetch weird stuff post-install, the application should be designed so that everything is already there in the bundle.
Put application data in the idiomatic locations; ~/Library/Application Support, ~/Library/Preferences, etc.
Carefully consider what keyboard shortcuts your application uses; if you use the Escape key for something, or modifier keys, make sure it does something that makes sense on the platform and doesn't conflict with other shortcuts.
Don't bundle Chromium.
Generally: Respect the user as much as possible. Things should "just work." If there's a situation where it doesn't or something feels "odd", you should do whatever you reasonably can to fix that.
That first part is a no-go, as the top concern for me is to have consistent UI across three platforms, so it won't look native, and that's a conscious choice, even with the tradeoffs.
It's a native cross-platform application, fully compiled, just one binary with a sidebar archive, so Chrome, post-install fetches and other similarly "weird" desktop experiences are already avoided :)
Thanks a lot for the extensive description of your expectations in general though, it's very helpful and I'll put it to good use!
I've been using Notepad Next, it supports leaving all your tabs open when you close the window which is the main feature I need. But I do miss the plugins.
> closing the window, quits the app
I've always hated this about macOS. And my main laptop is a macBook Air M3 15. The majority of my friends that use macOS have no idea how to quit an app. Nearly all think closing all the windows quits it. A lot of issues with a lot of apps can be fixed by quitting them and opening them up again. I help a ton of theater techs at a local improv theater. I finally gave up with most of them and told them to just reboot as a first step to fixing issues before continuing other troubleshooting steps.
Wow! As a heavy Notepad++ on Windows I am really happy. I haven't found anything to replace Notepad++ on Mac for me.
Sublime Text. The elder and chief of them all. The inspirer.
Bbedit is better than Sublime and is arguably more refined.
I use it and Bbedit and vi.
BBEdit is wonderful. I got hooked by TextWrangler and eventually bit the bullet to upgrade, and it was a great decision.
I’ve used Sublime (3 and 4), VSCode, Notepad++, vi, etc.; even made some plugins for Sublime, and I still vastly prefer BBEdit.
"The inspirer" huh? So Sublime Text went back in time 5 years and inspired Notepad++?
To burst your bubble, Notepad++ is the elder to Sublime Text by 5 years.
Zed. The newcomer. The liberator.
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47916964
>The only difference is that the menus, dialogs, file pickers, keyboard shortcuts, and windowing all use native macOS Cocoa APIs.
Why would I want native macOS dialogs where the save as dialog can only show 32 characters on the screen at once? I use LibreOffice on Mac mostly because it allows me to use their dialogs instead of the crap macOS ones...
One big reason is sandboxing - the native dialogs can view the entire filesystem hierarchy and automatically grant access to selected resources to the calling app. Non-native dialogs are restricted to whatever the app has access to, which means you often have to give the apps Full Disk Access to make them work properly.
Good point. I forgot that I had to do that...
Notepad++ is one of the BEST things to ever happen to Windows.