Windows 11 killed WordPad, but Notepad is absorbing its formatting skills

For years, Notepad has existed as a bare-bones text editor. No longer. Microsoft keeps adding to it, including a new update that includes capabilities that you might have expected in another Windows application, WordPad.

In May, Microsoft said in this blog post that it was adding “lightweight formatting” in Notepad, including Markdown input and file support, but also bold and italic fonts, bullet and numbered lists, and even hyperlinks, which would all be accessible via a new toolbar. According to Windows Latest, these features are now rolling out to all users outside the Windows Insider Program. Microsoft says the new features won’t gobble up resources or impact Notepad’s performance.

Two things seem to be going on here. In late 2023, Microsoft killed off WordPad, the rich text editor that served as a poor man’s alternative to Microsoft Word. (There’s a way to bring WordPad back, but you’d need access to an older version of Windows where WordPad still exists.) Traditionally, Notepad has been the Windows answer to a lightweight text editor that coders can use or write in, although more sophisticated alternatives like vim exist. It seems Microsoft is adding more features to try and help those users, while moving towards a WordPad replacement.

Microsoft, meanwhile, is bringing the Edit app to Windows as well. Edit is an open-source app that was basically designed as a command-line interface (or CLI) and Microsoft specifically referenced how obtuse vim was to use when announcing it. Either way, by beefing up Notepad—heck, even with Copilot!—and adding the Edit option as well, Windows is offering a number of lightweight CLI and text-editing interfaces without bloating the operating system even further.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published on May 30 when the feature was announced, and updated when the new Notepad capabilities went live.