Notepad++ dark mode lives under Settings > Preferences > Dark Mode. Current builds offer a Dark Mode and a Light Mode option, plus Follow Windows, and whichever you pick recolors the menus, toolbar, tabs and dialogs straight away.
The editing area is a separate matter. Its background and syntax colors belong to the active Style Configurator theme, which is why a black toolbar can sit above a white editor.
The setting first shipped in version 8.0 on 7 June 2021 (Notepad++ release news, 2021). Follow Windows came later, with 8.4.8 in December 2022. Anything older than 8.0 has no dark mode at all.
How do you turn on dark mode in Notepad++?
Open Settings > Preferences > Dark Mode and select Dark Mode, or Follow Windows to match the system theme. The page exists from Notepad++ 8.0 onward, and since 8.1.2 the interface recolors at once, with no restart.
It’s a built-in display setting. No plugin is involved, and nothing older than 8.0 has it.
- Click Settings in the top menu and choose Preferences.
- Select Dark Mode in the left-hand list.
- Pick Dark Mode, or Follow Windows to track the system light and dark setting.
- Optionally choose a tone under Tones (black, red, green, blue, purple, cyan or olive).
- Click Close. The choice applies immediately and is written to config.xml when Notepad++ exits.
Older guides trip people up on this one. A 2021 forum thread on version 8.1.1 shows a user digging through Style Configurator, which only changes the editor theme, before finding the real switch on the Preferences page.
Which version added dark mode?
It came in with 8.0, announced on 7 June 2021, and the 8.x releases since have kept changing how it behaves.
- 8.0 (June 2021) brought dark mode as a single on/off checkbox. Switching it on also moves the toolbar to a Fluent UI icon set, though Preferences > General lets you go back to the standard icons.
- 8.1.2 (July 2021) added six extra color tones, restartless switching and Windows 11 support.
- With 8.1.3 (August 2021), 95.427% of dialogs became dark-mode capable, and a dark-mode Markdown user defined language shipped with Notepad++.
- 8.4.1 (May 2022) gave plugins a way to detect dark mode.
- 8.4.8 (December 2022) introduced Follow Windows, and each mode now remembers its own theme.
Still not finished, either. The 8.8 changelog lists dark mode fixes for the combobox, slider, treeview edit, inactive menu bar and toolbar chevron.
How does Follow Windows work?
Follow Windows ties Notepad++ to the Windows app mode, so the editor flips between dark and light whenever the system setting changes. On Windows 10 and 11 that setting sits under Settings > Personalization > Colors.
Dark Mode stays dark and Light Mode stays light, whatever Windows does. Follow Windows is the only option that moves with the operating system.
The 8.4.8 release notes (December 2022) add a detail that matters. Toolbar, tab bar and theme choices are remembered separately for the two modes and swapped when the mode changes.
Before 8.4.8 the page held a single Enable Dark Mode checkbox. If that’s all you see, the install predates that release.
I’d leave it on Follow Windows if the system already flips at sunset. A fixed Dark Mode makes more sense for anyone who wants the editor dark all day, whatever Windows does.
Why does the editor area stay white after turning on dark mode?
The editor background belongs to the active theme, not to the dark mode switch. Dark mode recolors the interface, while a Style Configurator theme paints the text area, so a light theme stays light under a black toolbar.
That split explains most “half dark” screenshots. One 2021 forum thread describes exactly this: a black toolbar and title bar over a white editor.
| Element | Dark mode setting | Style Configurator theme |
|---|---|---|
| Toolbar, tab bar, status bar | Recolored by the tone | Not covered |
| Find, Preferences and other dialogs | Recolored, with exceptions | Not covered |
| Editor background and text | Follows the active theme | Defined here |
| Syntax highlighting per language | Not set | Defined here |
| Windows Open and Save dialogs | Windows decides | Windows decides |
The user manual states that pull-down menu controls and Windows-defined dialogs take their colors from the operating system. Notepad++ dark mode settings do not reach them.
Coverage of everything else is high but not total. The Notepad++ v8.1.3 release notes (August 2021) put 95.427% of dialogs under dark mode, which left a small remainder that stayed light.
Tabs follow the same split. In dark mode the tab colors ignore the theme’s tab styles by default, because the manual’s darkTabUseTheme setting defaults to “no”.
Current builds close most of the gap on their own. Per the manual, switching dark mode on loads the dark theme you used last, and since 8.4.8 each mode keeps its own theme.
On a current build, a white editor usually points to a light theme stored for dark mode. Open Settings > Style Configurator and pick a dark theme from the Select theme list.
My rule of thumb is to let dark mode handle the interface and choose the editor theme once, with dark mode already switched on.
How to change dark mode tones and colors
Go to Settings > Preferences > Dark Mode and pick a tone, or tick Customized to color individual interface parts. Tones change the interface only, so the editor background stays with the theme.
Notepad++ ships presets in black, red, green, blue, purple, cyan and olive. Each one is the dark base with a hint of that color, and black is the default.
Tones are new to 8.1.2, where six choices were added next to black. The user manual says tones affect most of the interface, including main menus, toolbars and most dialogs.
Customized hands you the individual components. The manual says outright that you can push it far enough that the interface stops being dark at all.
The arrow on the Reset button in the Customized section lists the built-in tones and resets Customized to the one you pick. The manual’s own example keeps Olive but turns the Link color from yellow to bright green. Clicking the text side of the Reset button instead returns Customized to the Black tone settings.
Starting from the nearest preset is quicker than building a palette from black. Fewer fields to touch, fewer clashing colors.
Which dark theme works best with Notepad++ dark mode?
For most setups a built-in theme is enough. Deep Black gives you a black editor, Obsidian a dark grayish blue. Community themes such as Dracula only pay off when you want one palette across several tools.
SlashGear’s walkthrough (2025) describes DansLeRuSH-Dark as the softer option, with a gray left gutter. Twilight, Vibrant Ink and Zenburn round out the built-in dark choices.
| Theme | What you get | Source |
|---|---|---|
| DarkModeDefault | The dark theme Notepad++ loads when dark mode switches on | Built in |
| Deep Black | Black editor background | Built in |
| Obsidian | Dark grayish blue editor and gutter | Built in |
| DansLeRuSH-Dark | Gray left gutter, softer look | Built in |
| Dracula | Full dark palette, rebuilt with 14 added lexers | Community, GitHub (MIT license) |
Notepad++ ships around 20 themes, according to the Notepad++ Themes Collection README on GitHub. That’s a wide enough menu to skip a download.
Themes beyond the default carry a catch. The developer keeps stylers.model.xml and DarkModeDefault.xml current with each release but relies on volunteer pull requests for the rest, so many themes lag behind (Notepad++ user manual).
Skip Global override for this job. It can override every other style, which flattens syntax highlighting into one color scheme, while switching the whole theme keeps each language’s own colors.
To apply a theme, open Settings > Style Configurator, choose it from the Select theme list and click Save & Close.
How to install a third-party dark theme
Download the theme’s XML file, drop it into %AppData%\Notepad++\themes (create the folder if it does not exist yet), restart Notepad++ and pick the theme in Style Configurator. A portable install uses the themes\ folder beside notepad++.exe instead.
On a normal install, %AppData%\Notepad++\themes is the place. To make a theme available to every user on one PC, use the themes folder inside C:\Program Files\Notepad++ (Program Files (x86) for a 32-bit build). A portable copy keeps its themes in the themes\ subfolder next to notepad++.exe.
The nppThemes repository, the official community collection on GitHub, documents all three locations.
Settings > Import > Import Style Themes… copies the file for you. The nppThemes README says Notepad++ installs it in the right place, while the user manual is more specific: it targets the themes folder in the installation directory, which sits under Program Files on a standard install, so Notepad++ can need admin rights.
Copying into %AppData% beats the Import menu on a normal install. No admin question, and Notepad++ reads both folders at startup to build the theme list.
- Save the raw XML. Saving the GitHub web page produces a file that is not valid XML, a pitfall the nppThemes README warns about.
- Theme files must be UTF-8 without a BOM, per the user manual.
- Restart before looking for the theme, since a running instance never picks up a new file.
Dracula keeps its own install steps at draculatheme.com/notepad-plus-plus.
How do you switch back to light mode or reset a broken theme?
Choose Light Mode on the Preferences > Dark Mode page (older builds have a single checkbox to untick), then exit and restart Notepad++, because the title bar only leaves dark mode after a restart. To undo broken colors, close Notepad++, delete DarkModeDefault.xml from %AppData%\Notepad++\themes and start it again, so the stock copy returns.
There is no factory reset button. A Notepad++ community regular said so in July 2026, and added that reinstalling changes nothing, because the installer leaves %AppData%\Notepad++ untouched.
- Exit all instances of Notepad++.
- Paste %AppData%\Notepad++\themes into the Explorer address bar.
- Delete the customized theme file you want to reset.
- Start Notepad++ again. It loads the unedited copy from the installation folder.
For the default theme, delete %AppData%\Notepad++\stylers.xml and restart. Notepad++ rebuilds it from stylers.model.xml, and every Style Configurator customization in the old file is lost.
On a portable copy, delete the file from the portable themes\ subfolder, then extract the original from the zip or 7z package of the same version (the official downloads site has fresh copies).
Mode state itself lives in config.xml. A 2022 forum answer showed a DarkMode line with enable=”yes” there, plus a stylerTheme path that flips to themes\DarkModeDefault.xml when dark mode switches on.
That snapshot predates the three-way selector, so the attributes can differ on current builds. Hand edits work only with Notepad++ closed, because the editor writes its config files on exit and overwrites anything changed while it runs.
Safer habit: copy DarkModeDefault.xml to a new name and edit the copy. The manual recommends that file as the base for any dark theme, and a forum member keeps a MyDarkModeDefault copy for experiments.
Why is Notepad++ dark mode not working, and what stays light?
Dark mode breaks down in a handful of documented situations. Plugin windows that never opt in, a Windows 11 hover bug in old 8.1.x builds, themes ignored in portable and cloud mode before 8.4.8, stale themes after an update, and user defined languages that carry light colors.
| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Plugin dialog stays light | Plugin never sends the dark mode message | Plugin update |
| Toolbar hover highlight stays light on Windows 11 | Microsoft dark mode API bug in 8.1.x builds before 8.1.8 | Update to 8.1.8 or later |
| Theme ignored in portable or cloud mode | Bug fixed in 8.4.8 | Update to 8.4.8 or later |
| Odd colors after an update | New styles added to the theme with light colors | Adjust them in Style Configurator |
| User defined language unreadable | Language carries its own light colors | Use a dark variant or recolor it |
Plugins opt in themselves. A plugin has to send NPPM_DARKMODESUBCLASSANDTHEME, a message new to 8.5.4, after its controls exist.
Version 8.8.2 extended that message to progress bars in plugin windows (8.8.2 release notes), but plugin authors on the Notepad++ forum have reported that it does not theme tab controls (SysTabControl32), so those have to be drawn by the plugin itself. Version 8.0 also added NPPM_ADDTOOLBARICON_FORDARKMODE so plugin authors can supply their own toolbar icons.
The Windows 11 problem is documented in GitHub issue 10510. Toolbar hot-track icons kept a light highlight in dark mode, and the maintainers added a workaround for the Microsoft API bug in 8.1.8 while leaving Windows 10 and older behavior alone.
Updates cause the subtlest damage. Before 8.8.9 the installer left existing themes alone, so new syntax styles never reached them.
From 8.8.9 Notepad++ copies new languages and styles into the active theme, and in 8.8.9 itself the added styles took the light-mode colors from the model file, which can look jarring in a dark theme. According to the manual, from 8.9 on a theme other than the default stylers.xml gets its own default foreground and background for added styles instead, and the manual links a community FAQ for repairing a theme that 8.8.9 already touched.
Since 8.8.9 the volunteer-maintenance lag on third-party themes matters less. Missing styles get filled in automatically, only not always in colors you like.
User defined languages need dark colors too. Notepad++ ships Markdown (preinstalled dark mode) as the example, and community answers say the matching variant is picked automatically when a Markdown file is opened, so only a file that was already open when you switched modes needs closing and reopening.
Notepad++ dark mode FAQ
Does dark mode change how Notepad++ prints?
Yes, through the theme colors. Dark themes use light text, and the default print option, No background colour, keeps that text on white paper, so the output turns near-invisible.
Set Settings > Preferences > Print > Colour Options to Black on white. Syntax colors disappear from the printout, and Invert also works if you want to keep some.
Which Windows versions support dark mode?
The 2021 GitHub fix for issue 10510 states that dark mode works on Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and 10, with Windows 11 covered by a workaround for a Microsoft dark mode API bug.
Newer builds set their own minimum Windows version, so check the release notes before upgrading an old machine.
Can dark mode run in the portable version?
Yes. The Preferences page is identical, but a portable copy keeps its configuration beside notepad++.exe, so stylers.xml and the themes\ folder sit in the portable directory instead of %AppData%\Notepad++.
Why does Markdown look wrong in dark mode?
Markdown highlighting comes from a user defined language, which carries its own colors instead of following the theme.
Notepad++ ships a light and a dark version (the dark one since 8.1.3) and normally picks the matching one when the file is opened. If you switch modes while a Markdown file is open, close and reopen it, or choose Markdown (preinstalled dark mode) from the Language menu.
Is there a shortcut to toggle dark mode on a running Notepad++?
No documented one. A 2022 community answer knew no outside route beyond sending clicks or keystrokes, and the plugin API in the user manual can read the dark mode state (NPPM_ISDARKMODEENABLED) but lists no message that sets it.
Follow Windows is the built-in way to switch automatically.
Keeping Your Dark Setup Safe Through Updates
Notepad++ dark mode rests on config.xml, stylers.xml and the themes folder, all inside %AppData%\Notepad++. Copying those before an update preserves the setup.
- Close every window, then copy the files and the folder.
- Install the update.
- Review new styles in Style Configurator.
Copy first, because 8.8.9 and later add new styles to the active theme themselves, so a copy taken afterwards already carries those additions.
The backup is a fallback, not a permanent profile. An old theme file lacks every style added after the copy was made, so restore it only to recover colors that broke.
This advice holds as of 4 November 2026, and it changes if a release alters how Notepad++ or its installer treats %AppData%\Notepad++.
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