How to Reload Files Automatically When They Change in Notepad ? (Monitoring)

Notepad does not automatically reload externally modified files by default. You need to manually enable "File Monitoring" and check "Update modified but unsaved files"; it detects changes through polling, with a default interval of 1 second. You can modify the fileCheckInterval in config.xml; when the file is occupied, it is recommended to open or close the interfering process for read-only.

Notepad does not have a built-in automatic reload function for file changes

It does not listen to disk changes and pop up a window asking "The file has been modified externally, do you want to reload it?" like VS Code or Sublime Text. The default behavior is: if the file is changed by other programs, Notepad will not notice it at all and continue to display the old content - when you save it manually, it may also overwrite the new data written by others.

To enable "File Monitoring", you need to manually turn on the monitoring switch.

This feature is deeply hidden and turned off by default. It does not monitor in real time, but polls and checks the last modification time of the file at a fixed interval (default 1 second). After turning it on, once a change is detected, a prompt box will pop up and you can decide whether to reload.

• Menu path: Settings → Preferences → General → File Monitoring → Check "Enable file monitoring" and "Update modified but unsaved files"
• The option更新已修改但未保存的文件is the most critical: if you uncheck it, even if the file has been changed, Notepad will only check it when you switch back to the tab, and there will be no pop-up window, and it will be reloaded silently (you may lose your unsaved edits)
• The polling interval can be adjusted in the configuration file: fileCheckInterval value (in milliseconds) in config.xml If it is changed too small, it will increase disk I/O. If it is lower than 500ms under Windows, it may be unstable.

What should I do if I encounter the prompt "File is occupied" or "Cannot reload"?

Commonly seen in log files, serial port output, or files opened exclusively by other processes. When Notepad attempts to open in shared read mode and fails, the reload process gets stuck.

• Make sure that the target file is not opened exclusively by Notepad, Excel, Python script, etc. (especially on Windows, use open() without adding the sharing parameter)
• If you must view the log being written, you can temporarily use "Open as read-only": right-click the file → "Open in Notepad as read-only", and then enable monitoring - at this time, no error will be reported if the reload fails, but it will be skipped
• Some security software or OneDrive/Google Drive synchronization process will lock files, you can try to temporarily exit them to test

Plug-in solutions (such as NppExec custom scripts) are not recommended for daily use

Someone uses NppExec to adjust inotifywait or PowerShell monitoring, and then triggers the FileReload command. Theoretically it is possible, but in practice there are many pitfalls:

• inotifywait under Windows relies on WSL, which causes high latency in cross-environment calls and prone to permission errors.
• PowerShell's FileSystemWatcher often misses events or crashes in the Notepad plug-in due to incompatible threading models.
• Executing commands every time a change is made can easily conflict with Notepad's own file operations. For example, if you happen to be typing at the moment of reloading, the cursor will jump and the content will be messed up.

Unless you clearly need silent automatic reloading (and accept the stability risk), native monitoring and manual confirmation is the safest way to go. The real difficulty is never "how to trigger reloading", but "how to ensure that the file is not truncated or in the middle of writing at the moment of reloading" - no text editor can solve this problem, and it must rely on the upstream program to ensure atomic writing.

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