Besides my Visual Studio 2022 and Visual Studio Code, I do use notepad++ editor.
I like it because it is light and fast for small editing tasks. In this article, I will share some of the plugins that I use that give value to my work.
Dark Theme
The first thing I do when I install software on my computer, I change the theme to dark. And Notepad++ has this feature.
Just click on Settings -> Preferences and check Enable dark mode
![](https://itbackyard.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/image-3.png)
Compare
I often compare 2 (I wrote an old article on how to install the plugins manually) or multiple similar files and do not want to open other software to do that, so I use compare extension for that.
![](https://itbackyard.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/image-4-1024x330.png)
The only downside of it is when I compare 2 documents using dark mode, it does not look good:
![](https://itbackyard.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/image-5-1024x395.png)
JsonViewer
JsonViewer is very handy to format JSON payload, and it gives a nice overview of your son array/object so you can navigate in it.
![](https://itbackyard.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/image-7-1024x555.png)
Npp XML Treview
XML might sound old days, but still used nowadays, and can be much noisier than JSON, so I use XML Treview to navigate in the XML file structure.
![](https://itbackyard.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/image-8-1024x380.png)
Converter
Finally, I use a converter on the fly to convert between ASCII, hex, decimal, binary and octal
![](https://itbackyard.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/image-9.png)
Conclusion
Notepad++ is as mentioned little nerdy open-source editor, That mentioned it has a lot of features like Macro and you can write using regex find and replace text, and more.
If you find more useful plugins or interesting features of notepad++ that give value to your work, please share them in the comments. If you think I should highlight a specific feature let me know as well in the comments field below.