Xpad

Xpad is a completely free, open source and very customizable note taking or sticky note application that can be used every time you want to write down things to remember.

Features at a glance

Key features include the ability to change the font style, color scheme, window decoration, as well as individual settings of each note. In addition, it provides support for system tray and integrates well on any open source desktop environment.

With its highly customizable GTK+ graphical user interface, Xpad offers independent pad windows (also known as basic text boxes) for writing notes. It stores all notes locally, on your disk drive, in readable UTF-8 plain text files.

Easy to use program that mostly sits in the tray area

When opening the program for the first time, a welcome screen will present the most important parts of the application, so make sure you read everything, as you will learn how to access the preferences, how the try icon works, how to change window decorations, fonts and colors, or about the keyboard shortcuts.

Under the hood and availability

While the program is written entirely in the C programming language, it uses the GTK+ GUI toolkit for its graphical user interface. It is designed to be used on any desktop environment, as long as the GTK+ requirement is met.

The best way to install the Xpad application it to use the binary packages from the default software repositories of your GNU/Linux distribution. A source archive is also available for download on the dedicated download section (see link above).

Bottom line

In conclusion, Xpad is a great little utility for your Linux desktop, as it allows you to write down everything important to you. Unfortunately, Xpad will not allow you to automatically synchronize your notes across multiple computers, only manually by copying the notes from and to the ~/.config/xpad folder.

What is new in this release:

• New: Reload from Disk - No way to refresh sticky that was edited externally (#1689429)
• Fix: Preferences -> Layout -> Change font gives error (#1708877)
• Fix: Preferences -> Color and font changes between custom and theme did not always work
• Fix: Preferences -> Xpad autostart_new_pad is broken (same fix as #1652845) (#1689754)
• Fix: Parameters - -f closes app, when trying to add note from file while xpad in running (#1652845)
• Fix: Technical - brackets [] changed to / in pad text (#1661054)
• Fix: Technical - Xpad quit by CTRL-Q give repetitive assertion error (#1708879)
• Fix: Technical - Fixed error on first time run: value TRUE of type gboolean is invalid or out of range for property autostart-xpad of type gboolean

What is new in version 4.8.0:

• Fix: Autostart - Pads did not hide on startup when set in the preferences due to the tray icon not being recognized properly (#1560019)

What is new in version 4.6.0:

• New: Preferences - The ability to hide the pads from the taskbar (which was previously binded to window decorations) (#1029202)
• New: Preferences - The ability to hide the pads from the workspace switcher (which was previously binded to window decorations) (#1340331)
• Fix: CLI - the show, hide and toggle command-line options have been fixed (#1424081)
• Fix: Menu - Limited the length of the note names in the menu items to 20 characters. This prevents very wide stretched menus.
• Fix: Internationalization - Added and updated the Xpad.pot file to restore the multi-lingual support (#1455888)
• Fix: Help - Set the ability to select and copy the help text (#1415138)
• Fix: Pad focus - Improved the showing and focussing of pads after minimization or creation of a new pad.
• Fix: Pad focus - After deleting a pad, it is conveniant to have the focus on another pad. This fix added that behavior.
• Fix: Performance - Only save the location of the pad to disk when exiting Xpad. This prevents a lot of disk writes when moving pads. (#1459251)
• Fix: Default settings - Window decorations are turned off by default (#1395889)
• Fix: Default settings - Autostart Xpad by default for all users (#1395889)
• Fix: Technical - Code cleanup - removed spaces and indentions
• Fix: Technical - Prevent deprecated error messages when not using configure --enable-debug=yes
• Fix: Technical - Changed preference window type from GtkDialog to GtkWindow (#1395309)
• Fix: Technical - Prevent race condition when application shutdown is requested
• Fix: Technical - Initialized uninitialized variable
• Fix: Technical - Replaced or removed deprecated GTK functions, such as gtk_alignment_new
• Fix: Technical - Removed debugging implementaton, since it was not used and uses unnecessary

What is new in version 4.5.0:

• User friendliness is the focus of improvements of this release.

What is new in version 4.4.0:

• Fix: Preferences - Redesign of preferences box to make sure it fits on small screens (#1333636)
• Fix: Command line - Can't find signal function address when using CLI parameter -f by Jaya Tiwari (#1332971)
• Fix: Technical - Clang compiler warning due to two incorrect variable initializations (#1395227)
• Fix: Technical - Clang compiler warning due to incorrect parameter usage (#1395227)
• Fix: Techincal - Added GTK minimum version requirement v3.10 (#1395227)
• Fix: Technical - Seg fault on closing the xpad (#1333727)
• Fix: Technical - Code cleanup - Spaces and indentions by Ankita Patil (#1366510)
• Fix: Technical - Replace GtkTextBuffer with GtkSourceBuffer in preparation of the search functionality by Sagar Ghuge (#1349838)

What is new in version 4.3:

• Migrated from GTK2 to GTK3
• Systray - ability to hide the tray icon (#890334)
• Toolbar - ability to add multiple separators (#351775)
• Toolbar - ability to add paste button on toolbar (#351775)
• Autostart - Ability to set the automatic start of Xpad in the Preferences menu (#405314)
• Autostart - Ability to set the wait for systray option in the Preferences menu (#405314)
• Autostart - Ability to delay the start of Xpad in the Preferences menu (#405314)
• Autostart - Ability to set the automatic creation of a new pad at the start of Xpad in the Preferences menu
• Autostart - Ability to set the automatic open/hide/restore of all pads at the start of Xpad in the Preferences menu (#405314)
• Shortcuts - Added shortcuts keys for New pad (CTRL-N) and Delete (SHIFT-DEL) and changed Redo from (CTRL-R) to ...
• Changelog:
• New: Systray - ability to hide the tray icon (#890334)
• New: Toolbar - ability to add multiple separators (#351775)
• New: Toolbar - ability to add paste button on toolbar (#351775)
• New: Autostart - Ability to set the automatic start of Xpad in the Preferences menu (#405314)
• New: Autostart - Ability to set the wait for systray option in the Preferences menu (#405314)
• New: Autostart - Ability to delay the start of Xpad in the Preferences menu (#405314)
• New: Autostart - Ability to set the automatic creation of a new pad at the start of Xpad in the Preferences menu
• New: Autostart - Ability to set the automatic open/hide/restore of all pads at the start of Xpad in the Preferences menu (#405314)
• New: Shortcuts - Added shortcuts keys for New pad (CTRL-N) and Delete (SHIFT-DEL) and changed Redo from (CTRL-R) to (CTRL-Y)
• Fix: Toolbar - improved default toolbar items to the commonly used items
• Fix: Toolbar - improved item names
• Fix: Toolbar - prevented a crash when erasing toolbar items
• Fix: Preferences - Changed descriptions of the options in the preferences menu in more understandable language.
• Fix: Preferences - Make sure that the preference window is always presented up front to the user, when requested.
• Fix: Help - updated help
• Fix: Technical - Migrated Xpad from GTK2 to GTK3 (#1242424)
• Fix: Technical - Replaced deprecated Glib and GTK statements
• Fix: Technical - Improved configure.ac for better debugging and code quality
• Fix: Technical - Corrected commenting style to C89 standard
• Fix: Technical - Reorganized code of preferences dialog in preparation of another change
• Fix: Technical - Prevented an error while changing the Edit lock preference
• Fix: Technical - Prevented a crash when using command line option -n (= new pad)
• Fix: Technical - Improve the hiding of pads at Xpad launch (#405314)
• Fix: Technical - Added thread safe handling of new preferences
• Fix: Technical - Ensured the use of GNU C libraries, so the readlink function is available
• Fix: Technical - Reduced the amount of functions by using generic setters and getters
• Fix: Technical - Reduced the number of includes
• Fix: Technical - Got rid of the global variable xpad_global_settings
• Fix: Technical - Improved performance by reducing the amount of GTK_ casts, as suggested in the GTK best practices
• Fix: Technical - Applied GTK best practices for inclusion of 1st config.h and 2nd its header file in each c-file
• Fix: Technical - Reduced errors when exiting the application
• Fix: Technical - Ensured that all the menus of each pad are updated when changing options in the View menu
• Fix: Credits - all files use the same credits format

What is new in version 4.2:

• Release notes:
• New: Undo/redo functionality such as CTRL-Z
• New: ability to reconfigure the left click behaviour of the tray icon
• Many bugfixes: see Changelog
• Changelog:
• New: Undo/redo functionality such as CTRL-Z (#1121740)
• New: Tray click behaviour can now be configured (#345278, #304331, #890335)
• New: Theme builders can now use seperate tray icon by adding xpad-panel.xvg (#907705)
• Fix: Theme color stays after application restart (#307669)
• Fix: Translation - get many new translations in from translators (thanks guys!!)
• Fix: Translation - French typo (#1216388)
• Fix: Translation - Russian typo which prevented the Help from working (#973825)
• Fix: added missing configure script (#890492)
• Fix: performance improvement by reducing the amount of harddisk writes (#1072698, #1207564, #782320)
• Fix: can now compile against glib-2.34.1 (#974011)
• Fix: no errors or crashes after a delete of a pad (#1237211, #1237563)
• Fix: different memory leaks (#1237211, #1237563)

What is new in version 4.1:

• Undo/Redo for xpad and bug-fixes. Feature by Sergei Riaguzov
• Bug #490445: crash when right-clicking on tray icon to display list of notes. Patch by David Hull
• Bug #360142: Add keyboard shortcuts for formatting. Patch by Dennis Hilmar
• Bug #591978: xpad critical start. Patch by OBATA Akio

What is new in version 4.0:

• Added --toggle (between --hide and --show). Patch by Paul Ivanov.
• Updated French, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish translations
• New Croatian, Estonian, German, Portuguese, Thai, and Turkish translations

What is new in version 3.1:

• Updated Danish, French, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish translations
• New Czech, Japanese, and Latvian translations

What is new in version 3.0:

• This fixes an issue where xpad would wake up constantly, preventing the system from idling.