For years, Windows Notepad was every advertisement for the unique style of plain text. However, it seems that Microsoft wants to teach this old dog some tricks once again. A rather significant update is being viewed by Windows Insiders in the Canary and Dev Channels. Yes, Notepad is getting text formatting.
That's right, the once-simple application is now adding bold, italic, and even hyperlinks. But that is not the end of it; bulleted lists, headings, and even Markdown support are being threaded through Notepad code.
To make way for all this new power, a new formatting toolbar will sit at the top of the Notepad window beside the classic File, Edit, and View menus, letting you try out some of the new styling options.
Dave Grochocki, principal product manager at Microsoft, provided insights on the Markdown integration. He stated that users who like to work in Markdown format will feel at home with the format switch, as they can switch back and forth between the formatted view and Markdown's raw syntax fairly fast via the menu and status bar.
Anxious that your favorite plain text editor is getting too fancy? If so, Microsoft appears to have anticipated your concerns. If formatting isn't your thing, you can wipe it all away in a snap. There are several options for clearing formatting on the new bar and in the standard edit menu.
And to make matters worse, if you're a staunch supporter of plain text, you can go to the Notepad options and turn the new lightweight formatting features off altogether. Therefore, if that were the case, you could certainly have a classic Notepad experience.
These attempts towards rich text are coming right on the heels of another surprising addition: AI-assisted text generation. Just last week, Microsoft started testing the Write feature: it can generate text based on user instructions. Having seen such changes, one would begin to ponder: Is Notepad becoming a mini Microsoft Word, slowly but surely?
Quite a turnaround for an app that had remained stable for decades. From a simple tool for logging files to one that could now style texts and even act as an assistant for writing them, Notepad has indeed taken off. Many of these improvements came after Microsoft was finally willing to say goodbye to its other lightweight text editor, WordPad, after almost 30 years of existence in Windows.
What do you think about these changes for Notepad? Good shift, or are you sticking to the old classic ultra-simple version?
