ScratchPad for Mac

ScratchPad is a free, simple text editor inspired by the old Mac default application Note Pad. You'll find much of the functionality of Text Edit here--including support for styles and a ruler, and the ability to use rich text, color, and images--but with a few clever additions.

ScratchPad automatically saves as you type, over multiple pages, letting you quickly flip forward and back through however many separate pages you want to create in the app. One big advantage of this multipage approach over Text Edit is that you won't have so many tiny .txt files littered all over your desktop or hard drive--in fact, there are no files to save at all.

One disadvantage, however, is that it can become difficult to find what you're looking for if you end up adding a lot of pages to ScratchPad. ScratchPad has some other deficiencies (for example, there is no quick way to convert a page to plain text), but other interesting features (such as its ability to float above other windows, transparently) make this free, fast-loading app worth checking out. We probably won't see many (if any) more updates to ScratchPad, since its developer is now working on a more full-featured app called ScratchBook.

• [Updated] Updated back & forward buttons to use OS X's native buttons.
• [Updated] Added Retina-compatible icons.