Classic Notepad parity
Find, Replace, Go To Line, Word Wrap, Font, F5 time/date, status bar — every menu item you remember.
Notesipper
A no-nonsense text editor for macOS.
Open. Type. Save. Quick sips of thought.
01
Open
Double-click a .txt or right-click any file → Open With.
02
Type
Plain text. No AI suggestions. No formatting toolbar.
03
Save
Encoding and line endings exactly as you want them. Or don't save. Your call.
It's just Notepad.
— for macOS, polished —
Classic Notepad re-imagined as a first-class Mac app. No AI. No plugins. No subscription. No telemetry. Just a fast, reliable place to write something down.
Everything you actually need.
Every classic Notepad menu item, plus the small modern touches that keep it pleasant on macOS in 2026.
Native macOS tabs
Open multiple documents in one window. Drag tabs apart, merge them back, or hit ⌘T for a fresh one.
Drag files in to open
Drop any .txt, .md, .log, .json straight onto a window and it opens as a new tab.
UPPER · lower · Trim
One-click case conversion, trim trailing whitespace, remove empty lines — straight from the Transform menu.
Duplicate & move lines
⌘D duplicates the current line. ⌃⌘↑ / ⌃⌘↓ reorders lines instantly. Borrowed from your code editor.
Regex Find & Replace
Flip the Regex checkbox in the Find panel for full NSRegularExpression power — backreferences and all.
Encoding picker
UTF-8, UTF-8 with BOM, UTF-16 LE/BE, Windows-1252, Mac Roman. Chosen on Save As. Auto-detected on Open.
Line endings preserved
Open a CRLF file, save it back as CRLF. LF stays LF. The status bar tells you which.
80+ file extensions
.txt .log .md .csv .json .yaml .swift .js .py .html .css .ini — right-click any of them → Open With → Notesipper.
Float on top
Pin a window above every other app. Perfect for jotting while you're researching in another window.
macOS Versions
Saved documents get full Versions history — File → Revert To → Browse All Versions, just like Apple apps.
Big files, no crashes
Memory-mapped reads. 100 MB opens instantly. 1 GB hard cap. The editor never hangs.
Privacy that's actually private.
Sandboxed. No network entitlement. No analytics SDK. No crash reporter. No third-party code at all. Your text never leaves your Mac unless you save or share it yourself.
What Notesipper deliberately doesn't do.
Hold the line on "just open and type". If you need any of this, use a different editor.
- AI suggestions, autocomplete, summarisation, rewriting
- Markdown preview, syntax highlighting, themes
- Plugins, scripting, settings sync
- Spell-check on by default
- Subscriptions, in-app purchases, upsells
- Telemetry, analytics, crash reporters, network calls of any kind
Specs.
- Price
- $1.99 — one-time
- Requires
- macOS 12 Monterey or later
- Architecture
- Universal · Apple Silicon & Intel
- Download
- ~1 MB