WordPad is dead in Windows 11, but Notepad is absorbing its 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.

Microsoft said Friday that it is adding “lightweight formatting” in Notepad, including markdown input and file support, but also bold and italic fonts and even hyperlinks. They’re all accessible via a new toolbar that includes these new formatting options.

Microsoft didn’t indicate that it is testing the new Notepad or offering these features in preview, so presumably these updates will arrive on your Windows PC soon.

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 existed.) Traditionally, Notepad has been the Windows answer to a light text editor that coders can use or write in, although more sophisticated alternatives like vim exist.

It seems that 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 references how obtuse vim was to use when it announced 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.