Yes, Notepad++ is really great. In my case, I would tend to have a bunch of text files in tabs that slowed loading, so associating 'txt' with it meant I'd have to wait to jot a note down. I could have fixed this by closing all tabs before putting it away, but I'm happier using VS Code for my larger text file needs and good old notepad.exe for quick notes.
FYI notepad++ has a setting to open a separate instance for each file. It drives me crazy when I install on a new machine and it defaults to the behavior you’ve described.
