Pineapple Notepad

Pineapple Notepad aims to be a simple, lightweight, and easy to use notepad application that can be a cross-platform alternative to Notepad++. It's based on Scintilla, Qt and KDE Framework, available on Windows, Linux¹ and macOS².

Pricing

Pineapple Notepad itself is free of charge, even for commercial purposes. Please review LICENSE file for details.

Note that it's currently closed source. See the "Open Source Goal" section if you want to support Pineapple Notepad and make it open source. Please consider donate!

Feature Comparation Table

Feature	Pineapple Notepad	Notepad++	Notepad Next	Notepad--	Kate
Open Source	❔3	✅	✅	❌	✅
Cross Platform	✅	❌ (Win-only)	✅	✅	✅
Text Encoding	✅	✅	❌	✅	✅
Show All Characters	✅	✅	⚠️4	⚠️4	⚠️5
Session Restore	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Hi-DPI Support	✅	⚠️6	✅	⚠️6	✅
Dark Theme Support	✅	✅	❌	✅	✅
Side-by-Side View	ℹ️7	✅	✅	❌	✅
Customizable Toolbar	✅	❌	❌	❌	✅
Macro Recording	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌
Change History	✅	✅	❌	✅	✅
Smart Highlight 8	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
tail -f Mode	✅	✅	❌	✅	ℹ️9
Search Result Pane	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Folder Pane	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Document Map	✅	✅	❌	❌	✅
"Run..." Dialog	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌
Interval Backup	✅	✅	❌	✅	✅
Quick Switcher10	✅	✅	❌	❌	✅
User Defined Language	✅	✅	❌	⚠️11	✅
Editor Engine	Scintilla	Scintilla	Scintilla	QScintilla	KTextEdit
Regex Engine	QRegularExpression	Boost.Regex	QRegularExpression	Boost.Regex 12	QRegularExpression

Open Source Goal

Pineapple Notepad is currently not an open source project, but the goal is to make Pineapple Notepad open source. I've set-up a $150 Ko-fi goal that Pineapple Notepad will be released as an Open-Source project if the goal is reached. Please read this post for details. If you're interested, please use the following links to support this project.

Sponsor Benefits

As a token of gratitude, sponsors will be able to receive a sponsor license and unlock some nice-to-have features before we reach the open-source sponsorship goals. Additionally, depending on the sponsor's donation, sponsors might be able to get credited within the application and access the source code before the open-source sponsorship goals are reached. Details are as follows:

Details

All listed benefits below only apply to sponsors who donate before we reach the Open Source goal.

Tier 0: 2 USD

• Get a sponsor license, which can be used to unlock some nice-to-have features in the free release version. Currently, the following features are available:
  • Theme color editor (to tweak a specific color in a theme)
• Get credited within the blog of the next release

Tier 1: 10 USD

• All tier 0 rights, and
• For at least the next 10 versions, get credited within the application's "About" dialog at "Special Thanks" tab
• Get pre-release / sponsor-edition of Pineapple Notepad on itch.io (the sponsor license is full featured without requiring a sponsor license)

Tier 2: 35 USD

• All tier 1 rights, and
• Get source code access on itch.io before the open-source sponsor goal is reached (for auditing and building from source)

If you have questions about sponsor benefits, please reach out to me by creating an issue or drop me a message on Ko-fi or any other form that can be reached.

Funding

Afdian

itch.io

Related Open-Sourced Projects

Some associated projects are already open-sourced:

• kf6redist: KDE Framework redistribution building scripts and patches.
• libintl: Patched libintl for easier build with CMake.
• icoutils-rs: drop-in, portable replacement for icoutils's icotool.

License

Pineapple Notepad is released under Pineapple Notepad End User License Agreement.

This section will be updated once the Open Source goal is reached.

Footnotes

1. Before reaching the Open Source sponsor goal, it will only available on Debian 13, Ubuntu 26.04 and deepin 25 amd64 version. Please consider become a sponsor to make me be able to reach the Open Source goal so it will be available on more distros and make porting possible. ↩

2. Available since 0.2.0. Bundle will not be signed. ↩

3. Currently not open-sourced. Planned to be Open Source once Open Source Sponsor Goal is reached (please consider donate!). Tier 2 sponsors can also get the full source code for building and auditing‌ purpose before the goal is reached. ↩

4. Some non-printable characters are not able to be shown. ↩ ↩²

5. I created an add-on for this feature, but currently showing line ending is not possible to implement. ↩

6. Some components have known issues with Hi-DPI support. ↩ ↩²

7. Currently only available as an experimental version in sponsor tier, will be available in future releases once Open Source Sponsor Goal is reached. ↩

8. Highlight selected word in the editor. ↩

9. Enable "Read-only" mode and also enable "Auto-reload" mode to get similar experience. ↩

10. Use Ctrl+Tab to switch between recently viewed opened documents. ↩

11. Only support keyword-level customization based on Lexilla's cpp lexer. ↩

12. According to their pre-existing legacy code and their current dynamic library, they are very likely reusing the same implementation that Notepad++ is using (BoostRegExSearch). ↩