Toms Knostenbergs

November 25, 2025

Notepad++ Now Has an Official MSI: Is It Good and How Can You Improve It Yourself?

What Changed?

With Notepad++ v8.8.8, a 64-bit MSI is now available for enterprise IT deployment. The MSI installer was one of the most requested features. On the Notepad++ download page, next to the EXE installer and a few portable zip options, now lies an MSI installer.

How Everyone Deployed Notepad++ Until Now?

It has always been complicated to modify the current Notepad++ EXE installer to meet enterprise standards in environments where end-users do not have admin rights, including disabling auto-updates and pre-installing specific plugins.

To overcome these issues, IT admins from all over the world have used one of the following methods to deploy Notepad++.

Install EXE with available command line options by manually downloading the EXE or using community package managers like WinGet.
Download installer from hass.de website where a custom Notepad++ MSI was created and maintained by GitHub user alexhass.
Repackaging every new Notepad++ EXE installation into high-quality MSI using paid repackaging software and making required adjustments for the organization’s needs. We have a video explaining how to do that in detail here:

In the Notepad++ GitHub project, maintainer donho mentions that MSI wasn’t created earlier because:

It was difficult to support multiple languages in MSI
There were some visual glitches during installation using earlier versions of WiX
Didn’t want to maintain two installer types

Now, as the Notepad++ project matures, he sees the MSI as a basic and simple installer used solely for IT deployment and nothing more. An MSI he can maintain independently. An MSI that will be available on the Notepad++ website and will not be available in the Microsoft Store based on these comments:

In this blog post, we investigate how good the new MSI is for enterprise use cases.

How Good Is the New Notepad++ MSI?

The new Notepad++ 8.8.8 MSI is created using WiX Toolset 6.0.2.0.

The MSI itself is minimalistic, simple, and without any ICE MSI warning or errors, which is great.

However, the installer is missing several major requirements to be called an enterprise-ready installer, as it was pointed out by several GitHub users prior 8.8.8 release.

So, what’s good, what’s missing, and how can we make adjustments to have a truly enterprise-ready MSI?

✅ What’s Good in The MSI

Customization And Overview Paradise

It’s an MSI. Everything is visible and clear. No surprises and ease of mind for IT admins when deploying it to thousands of endpoints compared to EXE installations, where they often act like black boxes.

Adding plugins

To install Notepad++ plugins from the app, it requires end-users to have admin rights since the files are installed into Program Files. But now that we finally have an official MSI, it’s super easy to add required plugins. Just create an MST file and place plugins into: “[ProgramFiles64Folder]Notepad++\plugins”. A great example of what you can do with MSI customization.

No Desktop Shortcut

There is no desktop shortcut in the MSI, which is good. The desktop is a user’s private space, and no application should create shortcuts there by default. This is an especially widely accepted practice in the majority of organizations where application packagers spend time deleting desktop shortcuts from third-party installers.

For developers, the best practice is either not to create the desktop shortcut at all or, at least, to have a property that can be easily used via the command line when deploying to disable the creation of the desktop shortcut.

❌ What’s Missing in The MSI

No Option To Disable Auto-Updates

There is no out-of-the-box option to disable Notepad++ auto-updates in the MSI, and this is a must-have. For MSIs targeted specifically for enterprises, auto-updates should be disabled by default.

When building an installer, developers should always take into account that their application may be used by larger organizations where they have application management standards to control application updates themselves.

Another concern, which remains unanswered, is what exactly gets installed when an auto-update is triggered for app installed via MSI. We assume it installs the EXE version on top of the MSI, which complicates things because we couldn’t identify any changes that would prompt auto-update to download the correct installer. This issue is more concerning for home users, who might accidentally install the MSI version of Notepad++ and later receive EXE-based updates on top of the MSI.

No Upgrade for EXE installs

The MSI does not upgrade the previously installed Notepad++ EXE installation.

It would be excellent if software developers created installers that upgrade all their previous app versions, despite the installation format. The best solution would be to strive to support only one type of installer, so there wouldn’t be a need to worry about multiple installation type upgrade support in the first place.

MSI reliability properties

Over the years of doing app packaging, we’ve learned to always use specific MSI properties to improve installation reliability, for example, to prevent unexpected machine reboots using REBOOT=ReallySuppress property.

We have a blog post describing these properties here.

Missing functionality in the App

Comparing MSI-installed Notepad++ with the EXE-installed version, we noticed that Markdown language options (both standard and dark mode) are missing in the MSI installation.

If you need these features, extract files from the EXE installation and install them in the per-user location. We showed how to do this in our Notepad++ repackaging video using the free Community version of Master Packager software and our Predefined Custom Actions.

Missing App Path Registry Key

It’s a registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths that holds information about the path to executable files. It allows you to run applications without having to type the full path in the Run dialog.

Improving Official Notepad++ MSI as an IT Admin

Now that you have an official MSI from the Notepad++ team, you can skip repackaging EXE or using other people’s created MSIs, but focus on creating the best version of the Notepad++ package yourself.

Here are the steps on how to do it:

Download the MSI
Open the MSI with Master Packager (Free community version).
Click Transform → New Transform → Save next to the MSI file.

In Advanced Editor → Uninstall or Change Programs → Uncheck “Display Modify Button” as it is not needed.

Go to Table Editor → Component table.
Filter by “UpdaterFolder” and add DONTINSTALL to the Condition column for all filtered components. This will prevent installing MSI components that hold files responsible for Notepad++ auto-updates.
Note that this will break plugin installation functionality in the app, but that’s ok, as users would need admin rights anyway to install Notepad++ plugins, and enterprise end-users do not have admin rights to do any of this.

Add App Path Registry to improve end-user app launch experience. Go to Registries view → Create HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\notepad++.exe key with default registry name value pointing to notepad++.exe primary file key and for Path registry name value pointing to the Directory name where the notepad++.exe is installed.

Apply MSI reliability properties. Pro tip - you can automate applying these properties with one click using Master Packager templates functionality.

If you need to have specific plugins preinstalled, then:

Install Notepad++ on a test machine.
Grab plugin files from: “C:\Program Files\Notepad++\plugins”
In Master Packager Advanced View → Files view, drag and drop plugins into: “[ProgramFiles64Folder]Notepad++\plugins”
Click Build Now. This will create a data.cab file that must stay next to the MSI and MST during installation.

If you previously repackaged Notepad++ into an MSI or used MSI from hass.de, then:

Reuse your previous MSI Upgrade Codes.
In Master Packager → Advanced View → Upgrade section
Press NEW
Paste your previous MSI package Upgrade Code to Upgrade Code textbox
Set Max Version to 8.8.8
Set Action Property to WIX_UPGRADE_DETECTED
Press ADD and then NEW again
Paste your previous MSI package Upgrade Code to Upgrade Code textbox
Select checkbox Detect only
Set MinVersion to 8.8.8
Set Action Property to WIX_DOWNGRADE_DETECTED

You’re good to deploy this as is. But if you want to take it to the next level, we strongly recommend wrapping it with PSAppDeployToolkit (PSADT).

Wrapping into PSADT

You’ll get a great end‑user experience with PSADT pop‑ups to prevent forced closes and standardized package creation, plus easier removal of previous EXE installations using built‑in PSADT functions.

For that use Master Wrapper (Free or Pro) to easily wrap the MSI inside the PSADT.

Open Master Wrapper
Drag & Drop MST file to the application info view or select “Load data from installer”.

Add description. (If you will upload this package to Intune using Master Packager Toolbox, then this info will automatically be used for Intune Company Portal, saving you time)
Move to “Main actions” -> Install view
Add PSADT function Uninstall-ADTApplication in the first line to ensure Notepad++ EXE uninstallation before starting to install new MSI version.

6. You can see that Master Wrapper automatically loaded notepad++ exe as a process to be closed using the PSADT prompt if opened during install and uninstall, ensuring an amazing end-user experience.

That’s it. Save it and upload to your deployment system or use Master Packager Toolbox to upload to Intune faster.

You can download a ready package with the created MST and PSADT here.

How the Notepad++ installer should have looked from the start

The main problem is that there are two installers, and neither of them works as well as they could.

Both need to be created, maintained, and communicated to end-users. How is a regular home user supposed to know which one to install? How would they know that the MSI option is meant only for enterprises, will be missing features, and might even try to install an EXE during an update, making their machine a mess? Sure, a text could be added next to each installer explaining what it’s for, but that’s just solving a problem, not eliminating it.

With open-source projects, we often hear that it is hard to find people who are willing to help maintain the project or contribute. But in this case, the MSI is created using WiX Toolset and ends up being 807 lines of code, while their EXE installer is built with NSIS and requires multiple files and folders, each containing hundreds of lines of code that someone would need to read and understand in order to help.

Building MSI or MSIX or both using Master Packager Dev

After years of packaging thousands of third-party apps for organizations, we learned how hard it is to understand, build, and afford a great installer. That is why we created Master Packager Dev. It is a command-line tool that developers can integrate into their CI/CD pipelines to build excellent MSI and MSIX packages from a simple JSON project file. It is free for non-commercial organizations like Notepad++ team.

The project file for MSI

We decided to go with JSON file as it easy to create and read.
Master Packager Dev will not only build the installer, but also sign all binaries and installer, add Windows 11 modern context menu or add auto-update component that can update package also for users without admin rights completely silently.
This is how the project file looks like to build MSI that works great for home users as well for enterprises.

Build is simple as running mpdev build path_to_json

The end result is an excellent MSI file for organizational deployment systems, as well as a simple installation experience for home users.

It is also possible to add MSIX option in the project file if you know your app will work under MSIX packaging type.

Download Master Packager Dev, try it yourself, check out the documentation or reach out to us for help or advice.

Final thoughts

It is great that the Notepad++ developer is starting to listen to the community and is now offering an MSI installer. It is a much better option than the EXE created with NSIS (Nullsoft Scriptable Install System) or Inno Setup, which let developers build installers that organizations often need to redo afterward.

However, as this new MSI is clearly marked as an enterprise deployment-ready solution, it really isn’t due to the fact that auto-updates are left enabled without official instructions on how to disable them, there are missing features when compared to EXE installation, and IT admins still need to do packaging before they can deploy the installer.

The goal should be to create and support only one packaging type that is ideal for home users, and organizations do not need to spend extra time packaging it. An MSI is a perfect packaging type to achieve that, either using WiX Toolset, Master Packager Dev, or other solutions.

Having MSI for Notepad++ as an additional packaging type is a great first step forward, and we should be happy even if it is not perfect (yet). :)

———

If you as third-party app packager, IT admin or independent software vendor developing your own app are ready to build Windows application packages that end-users love, enterprises want, and the Windows OS needs we are here to help with our knowledge and solutions.

Our mission is to help finally end the endless cycle of re-doing where every organization is forced to waste time and money fixing vendor applications that should have been created correctly from the start.

Have an easy package, or hard, because you’re a Master Packager.