Notepads is not an alternative to Visual Studio Code, but it’s a great alternative to Notepad, Windows 10 default text editor. An alternative that Microsoft should have offered a long time ago, imo.
It’s open source, it’s fast and it sports a modern UI (aka a clean and simple interface, supporting Dark mode, with tabs). And Markdown support is planned too, btw.
It’s available as a beta on GitHub, but I have had no issue for the week or so I’ve been using it.
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