trail of the light
the truth is out there

Notepad++ is definitely one of my favorite piece of software, which makes a significant difference in my everyday work, making things easier and more user-friendly. On the other hand, it’s a feature-rich program in which You can adjust a great many things to Your Own liking. But what would You do in case of any failure, which could result in all those carefully tailored settings’ loss? It may be much time-consuming to restore all of those, especially given that it often hard to remember each and every detail presents somewhere within the pretty entangled configuration tabs :) .

Fortunately Notepad++ has an amazing feature which is called Settings on Cloud. This somewhat misleading name not necessarily refers to cloud services like Google Drive, One Drive, etc. It simply allows You to point out the place (e.g., on Your disk) where all the app’s settings will be stored. Using another option You can also include Your not-yet-saved text documents’ backup.

What is amazing here is that - thanks to this feature - Notepad++ may be restored in a blink of an eye from a brand new, clean installation to the point in which You couldn’t tell the difference between its current - and the previous state. I find this surprising, especially given that the app remembers even pretty detailed things, like custom plug-ins’ keyboard shortcuts, GUI colors, vertical tabs positioning and many more.

When I first encountered this feature in action, I was pretty impressed :) . Thanks to this I haven’t been in the need of setting anything up for a long, long time now (i.e., many new installations ago) - I just pointed out the source of the “cloud” backup and voilà, the app has been restored, as if nothing has happened :) .

Although You don’t need to put Your backup into the cloud literally - it may be a good idea to do so, because then You will double-secure Your data. It will be enough just to pick Your cloud storage path as a backup destination (see instructions below). So, what do You need to set this up from scratch?

Automatic backup/restore of the app’s settings.

1. Go to Settings › Preferences.
2. From the categories on the left choose Cloud, then check Set Your cloud location path here, click ... button and point out Your desired directory to store Notepad++ settings.

Automatic backup of the documents You’re working with.

1. Go to Settings › Preferences.
2. From the category list on the left, choose Backup, then check Remember current session for next launch and Enable session snapshot and periodic backup, then enter the time interval to perform the backup (in seconds).
3. In the Backup path field paste the path to the folder where You want the backup of Your non-saved text documents to be stored.
4. In case You’d like saved documents to be included within the backup, check Simple or Verbose under Backup on save and once again pick up the location for the backup (Custom Backup Directory › three-dot button).

Choose Verbose backup in case You’d like to have more detailed history of Your documents - this way You will have multiple versions of the same document at Your disposal, instead of only the most recent one (every time You save a file, Notepad++ will create its mirror version in a backup folder - the filename is appended with a date and a timestamp).