Notepad++ Author Forces Rename of AI-Built macOS Port to 'Nextpad++' After Trademark Complaint (May 4, 2026)

Notepad++ creator Don Ho on May 1, 2026 publicly disavowed an unofficial macOS port of his iconic open-source code editor, filed a trademark complaint with Cloudflare, and threatened legal action against its New York-based developer Andrey Letov. By May 4, the port had begun rebranding to Nextpad++ — closing what Mac users briefly thought was a 20-year wait for a native build.

What Happened

The dispute began with a project called Notepad++ for Mac, started on March 10, 2026 by independent developer Andrey Letov. Letov shipped version 1.0.0 on April 7 and 1.0.2 on April 14 as a universal binary for Apple Silicon and Intel Macs, claiming the build was a full native port written on top of macOS Cocoa APIs and the Scintilla editing component — no Wine, no CrossOver, no Rosetta. The release was widely covered as the long-awaited Mac edition of the editor in MacRumors, Slashdot, and other outlets.

Notepad++ is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3, which explicitly permits forks and derivative works — but the project's name and logo are trademarked, and Ho says he never authorised either to be used. Worse, Letov's site reproduced Ho's own biography and artwork in a way that Ho argues misrepresented the port as official. On May 1 Ho published a blog post calling the project a "fake" and asked the community to help correct online listings; The Register first reported that he had filed a trademark complaint with Cloudflare, the domain's CDN provider.

Key Details

• Project history: Started March 10, 2026; v1.0.0 released April 7, 2026; v1.0.2 (Apple Silicon + Intel universal binary) on April 14, 2026 — all under the original "Notepad++ for Mac" branding.
• Trigger event: Ho's May 1 blog post calling the port "fake"; Cloudflare trademark complaint filed shortly after.
• Legal basis: Notepad++ source is GPL v3 (forking permitted), but "Notepad++" wordmark and the green-chameleon logo are registered trademarks owned by Don Ho.
• Letov's response: Initially asked Ho for endorsement and added a banner claiming rebranding would happen "in coordination with Don Ho." Ho told The Register no such coordination existed.
• Outcome: Starting with version 1.0.6, the macOS app is being renamed Nextpad++ — a nod to NeXT, the Steve Jobs company whose codebase became the foundation of macOS. New domain: nextpad.org.

What Developers Are Saying

Reaction across The Register's comment section, Slashdot and r/programming has been mixed. Trademark-savvy commenters broadly side with Ho — copying the name, the logo, and the founder's biography crosses well past "derivative work" and into impersonation regardless of how the GPL handles the source code. Mac developers, however, expressed frustration that 20 years of demand for an official Notepad++ macOS build had been answered only by a third-party project that immediately got tangled in branding.

A separate technical thread questioned the port's quality: Letov has described it as an AI-assisted rewrite, and several Hacker News commenters worry that an LLM-generated translation of a complex C++ codebase to Cocoa is more likely to introduce subtle text-handling bugs than a hand-written port. Outlets including HotHardware have leaned on the AI-generated framing as part of the criticism.

What This Means for Developers

For Mac users hoping to drop Notepad++ into their workflow today, the practical impact is small: the Nextpad++ binary is the same code as the v1.0.x "Notepad++ for Mac" releases, just under a different name and domain. If you'd already downloaded a build under the old branding, you don't need to reinstall.

The broader signal is more interesting. As AI-assisted ports become trivially cheap, the gap between "GPL says I can fork the code" and "trademark law says I can't use the name" is going to be tested far more often. Maintainers of trademarked open-source projects (think: VS Code, Obsidian, even Linux distros) should expect a wave of LLM-generated forks and would be wise to publish a clear branding policy alongside their licence file.

What's Next

Letov has agreed to rebrand the macOS app as Nextpad++ and migrate to nextpad.org, but Ho has rejected the requested two-week transition window, citing ongoing trademark exposure. The Cloudflare complaint against the original notepad-plus-plus-mac.org domain remains pending. There is still no official Notepad++ Mac build from Don Ho's upstream project; the original Windows binary continues to ship in the same release cadence at notepad-plus-plus.org.

Sources

• The Register — "macOS port of Notepad++ called out for trademark violation" — broke the Cloudflare complaint and Ho's direct comments.
• Tom's Hardware — "Notepad++ creator threatens legal action over macOS port" — coverage of the trademark threat and developer response.
• MacRumors — "Notepad++ Code Editor Comes to Mac After 20-Year Wait" — original launch coverage of the unofficial port.
• heise online — Trademark violation analysis — German technical press perspective on the GPL-vs-trademark angle.
• HotHardware — AI-generated port criticism — focus on the AI-assisted nature of the port and quality concerns.
• nextpad.org/about — the rebranded project's own statement of independence from Don Ho's upstream.