Recap: Since Home windows 11 launched in 2021, Notepad has acquired a number of the most vital updates in its 42-year historical past. Whereas the plaintext editor has historically served as a light-weight various to Microsoft Phrase for coding and easy note-taking, current additions are making it more and more resemble a standard phrase processor.
Home windows Insiders can now entry a formatting toolbar in Notepad to use textual content styling. This function is presently accessible within the Canary and Dev channels, and previous replace patterns recommend it would ultimately roll out to all Home windows 11 customers.
Insiders can apply daring, italic, and Markdown-style formatting to differentiate common textual content from headers. Notepad additionally now helps hyperlinks and bullet-point lists.
A toggle button within the standing bar on the backside of the window permits customers to modify between formatted Markdown and uncooked Markdown syntax. Moreover, customers preferring conventional plaintext enhancing can fully disable formatting within the settings menu.
Formatting is simply the newest of a sequence of updates Notepad has acquired over the previous few years. The app, one in every of Microsoft’s oldest, underwent comparatively little change because the launch of Home windows 95 three a long time in the past, however acquired a brand new person interface and help for darkish mode in 2021. Browser-style tabs had been launched in 2022, adopted by spellcheck and autocorrect in 2023. The addition of generative AI-based textual content enhancing late final yr was seemingly probably the most important and controversial function thus far.
Why Microsoft is now including phrase processing options to its plaintext editor stays unclear. Nevertheless, inspecting related apps could provide perception into the corporate’s technique.
Different editors like Chic Textual content, Visible Studio Code, and Notepad++ have lengthy supplied a richer function set than Notepad, so the current updates may be a response to the competitors. Nevertheless, the current deprecation of WordPad may very well be one other issue.
Launched alongside Home windows 95, WordPad supplied a built-in wealthy textual content editor for customers unwilling to pay for a full Microsoft Workplace license. It crammed a center floor between Phrase and Notepad. Microsoft could now be shifting a few of WordPad’s performance to Notepad to fill that hole.
Nonetheless, Home windows customers haven’t any scarcity of free textual content enhancing choices as we speak. Cloud-based options like Google Docs and iCloud Pages allow syncing throughout a number of gadgets with out requiring a subscription, in contrast to Microsoft 365. In the meantime, FreeOffice and LibreOffice present absolutely offline performance and intently resemble Microsoft Workplace.
Microsoft additionally continues to supply a non-subscription model of Workplace, which is incessantly discounted. The most recent limited-time deal presents Microsoft Workplace Professional 2021 for simply $49, a 70% low cost.
