Notepad++ as External Script Editor?

Unity Engine
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I apologize if this is in the wrong place, but it seemed the most appropriate spot for this question.

I’m looking to use Notepad++ as my script editor in Unity. Since the only thing I really need from the IDE is writing code, a colour scheme, and having the Unity syntax auto-suggested, using Visual Studio kinda seems like swatting a fly with a Buick.

So far I have managed to do the basic step of selecting Notepad++ as my external editor (For those interested: Edit->Preferences->External Tools; you can either set Notepad++ by name, or select whatever app your OS uses to open scripts by file extension).

The part where I know this will fall short is that Notepad++ doesn’t know the Unity keywords, and won’t be able to auto-suggest Unity-related syntax. Given the relatively long-lived Unity community, I guess I assumed someone would have done this already. I did find a few examples, but they were all quite outdated (nothing past Unity 4).

So, to get to the point, does anyone know of a way to get Notepad++ to recommend Unity-specific terms in its auto-suggest?

2

Hello,

I would disagree, maybe your projects are small and doesn’t need every tools of Visual Studio but it’s not overshoot with that much. If you’re looking for something more lightweight, VS Code is lighter and may be what you’re looking for.
Maybe there exists an extension of Notepad++ for Unity autocompletion but I don’t know any

2 Likes
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I’m with diXime here. Notepad++ is an awesome text editor, but it’s just not an IDE. Even when you have syntax files for Unity / C#, N++ does not really do code analysis. So the suggestions are often wrong. Also suggesting things defined within the same script or other scripts in your project is also not possible AFAIK.

Personally I didn’t notice any “lightweightness” with VS code ^^. It’s also quite memory consuming and the visual interface isn’t the fastest, especially on older PCs. I find VisualStudio to run more smoothly and has way better Unity integration. When you keep VS open the performance is actually the best I can think of. I used VS code for editing large php projects and Notepad++ for lua programming. Though for C# nothing has topped VS yet.

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I’m also a minimalist that hates Visual Studio and would love to use notepad++ but the last time I looked it wasn’t possible. It seems after a certain point people lost interest in adding support for Unity.

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Huh? My partner uses Notepad++ all the time (he’s not a programmer, and only occasionally opens a code file, so wants it to load super fast).

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Support is there. Just go into Preferences->External Tools->External Script Editor

In the drop down you’ll likely have to Browse to your Notepad++ install location (once selected the first time it’ll be in the dropdown forever from then on).

And bam, now your scripts open in Notepad++.

Notepad++ should automatically recognize your *.cs files as csharp and highlight accordingly.

As for any added support like intellisense or code completion. Well… it’s Notepad++, it doesn’t really do that out of the box! That’s what makes this editor “minimalist”, it’s just a text editor. I don’t know what support they’d be adding to Notepad++ for Unity considering what Notepad++ is designed to do. (yes I get that it has some minor completion suggestions, but it’s not really what it’s designed for)

…

I’m often confused by the hate Visual Studio gets and the desire for minimalism but still wanting autocomplete and intellisense.

OK… so like as someone who always has Notepad++ open on my screen when I’m in windows. As someone who extensively uses linux in his day to day life. As someone who also runs macos. Basically my dev machine is a virtual server on which I’ve loaded multiple video cards and like 128 gigs of RAM and I spin up virtual machines of every environment I want and bounce between them on a whim.

As someone like this who spends a good deal of time in the shell. As someone who hangs out with “vim is all you need” crowds. As someone who has been party to emacs praise threads. I thought I’d understand the desire for “minimalism”.

But then Visual Studio Code came around and everyone was like “omg, so much better than Visual Studio”. And… I don’t understand it. The ONLY thing Visual Studio Code can do better than Visual Studio in regards to Unity is launch a few seconds faster? But I mean… I open Unity, open Visual Studio, and then they’re just open all day long. I’m not closing and opening Visual Studio. Why would I?

And then I hear about people trying to insert all sorts of functionality into Visual Studio Code beyond the standard C# support. Integration with Unity and all that fun stuff. Cause they want it to behave like a full fledge IDE. And often times there are threads here on the forums of people who can’t get it working as there’s a ton of legwork you gotta do, and as far as I heard the Unity package for it has been deprecated, and so on and so forth.

And I’m just like… Visual Studio works right out of the box. No hassle.

And none of this sounds like minimalism to me… if it was. Notepad++ would be minimalist!

It sounds to me like every thread I see on this topic is that people don’t like that Visual Studio takes a few second to launch. To which I’m like… you’re on a dev machine!? Unity takes way longer to open than Visual Studio! And you aught to have in the realm of 16 gigs of RAM, plenty enough for Unity and Visual Studio to share along with your browser. So… why is launch time a concern?

And mind you… I have Visual Studio Code as well! But I don’t generally use it for Unity as the integration features of Visual Studio and the debugger are just that much better.

But, what is this minimalism everyone is talking about?

4 Likes
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minimalism good!

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OH… so it’s small font size.

Yeah, Visual Studio does that.

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.

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AFAIK just syntax highlighting.

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Locking this thread as it is very old. If you’d like to continue the conversation, please create a new thread.

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