There are some new features in Microsoft’s Notepad app, such as dark mode and an easy way to search and replace text with other text. This is a welcome upgrade as Microsoft begins rolling out to its Windows Insiders alone.
The visual changes, like dark mode, a new right-click menu, and Windows’ new theme-adopting material, are nice, but the functional changes will probably be the most important for anyone who actually writes in Notepad.
Windows 11 comes with a version of the app that doesn’t have all of these features yet. The text search tool and the find and replace tool are two separate pop-up windows that can be opened with two different keyboard shortcuts. There are now two floating bars instead of something that looks like it was made in the XP days.
There will also be a new undo system that allows you to go back more than one step, instead of the old version’s system that only lets you go back one step. If you want to delete one word at a time, you still can’t use Ctrl-Z to do it. But the new version of Notepad clearly has more memory than the old one did.
Some other things that could be better are that Word Wrap doesn’t work by default. It’s in the View menu now, but the old “Format” menu in Notepad is gone. With the Font button moving to the Edit dropdown, the old “Format” menu in the old Notepad is gone as well.
It looks like Microsoft is making small changes to Notepad to make it less like a relic, rather than adding a lot of new features and making it into a completely new app.
I think that’s the right thing to do, given that Notepad has a sibling called WordPad that isn’t as well known. WordPad is more like Microsoft Word than a plain text editor. Unlike even the new version of NotePad, WordPad lets you look at and change.docx files, unlike even the new version of NotePad.
Windows 11 Insiders who use the Dev channel should be able to see the new look for Notepad. I recommend checking the Microsoft Store for updates if you’re running the test version of the OS and don’t see it on your screen.
As long as Microsoft keeps updating its built-in apps, like Notepad and Photos, along with its bigger products like Office and Windows, it’s good to see them getting better.
