| Windows Notepad | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | |||||
 Notepad onWindows 11 | |||||
| Original author | Richard Brodie | ||||
| Developer | Microsoft | ||||
| Initial release | 1983; 42 years ago (1983) (asMulti-Tool Notepad) | ||||
| Stable release(s)[±] | |||||
| |||||
| Operating system | Windows 10,11 | ||||
| Platform | IA-32,x86-64, andARM (historicallyItanium,DEC Alpha,MIPS, andPowerPC) | ||||
| Predecessor | MS-DOS Editor | ||||
| Type | Text editor | ||||
| License | Freeware | ||||
| Website | apps | ||||
Windows Notepad is a simpletext editor forWindows; it creates and editsplain text documents. It was first released in 1983 to commercialize thecomputer mouse inMS-DOS.
In May 1983, at theCOMDEX computer expo inAtlanta, Microsoft introduced theMulti-Tool Notepad, amouse-based text editorRichard Brodie had created as a stripped down version ofMulti-Tool Word. Notepad had the ability to bold, underline or italicise text removed. All these programs were to support the release of the $195Microsoft Mouse, with the mouse coming with Notepad or Word, sometimes both, depending on the date.[3][4][5] Most visitors had never heard of a computer mouse before.[6] The mouse began shipping in July.[7] Initial sales were modest because it had no use other than running the programs included in the box (a tutorial, a Doodle drawing app, a musical piano app, Multi-Tool Notepad and/or Multi-tool Word.)[8]
The Multi-Tool product line began withexpert systems for theMultiplan spreadsheet.[9][10] On the suggestion ofRowland Hanson, Microsoft dropped the Multi-Tool brand name. Hanson's rationale was that "the brand is thehero" and people wouldn't automatically associate "Multi-Tool" with Microsoft. As a result, the Multi-Tool Notepad and the Multi-Tool Word became Windows Notepad andMicrosoft Word, respectively. (Hanson also convincedBill Gates to rename "Interface Manager" to "Windows" before the release ofWindows 1.0.)[6][8]
Since then, Notepad has been part of Microsoft Windows.
Since the introduction ofMicrosoft Store in 2012, Microsoft has converted some of the built-in Windows apps intoMicrosoft Store apps (e.g.,Sticky Notes), so that they could be updated independent of Windows releases. Within three years, Notepad has appeared on Microsoft Store thrice. The first time was in August 2019; it vanished shortly thereafter.[11] This version required Windows 10preview build 18963.[12] During this short-lived presence on the Store, technology news blogs speculated that Microsoft intended to de-couple Notepad's life-cycle from that ofWindows 10 and update it more frequently through Microsoft Store.[12][13] Notepad appeared on Microsoft Store for a second time in April 2020, this time, sporting a new logo. It runs on the preview versions of Windows 10,build number 19541 or later.[11][14]
On 16 February 2022, Microsoft started rolling out a new and redesigned version of Notepad to all Windows 11 users. This version had Dark Mode added and a new Find and Replace flyout with the same functionality. Notepad is now available in the Microsoft Store in both Windows 10 and 11.
On March 21, 2024, Microsoft announced that it is adding spellcheck and autocorrect to Notepad for Windows 11.[15][16]
On November 6, 2024, Microsoft announced that rewriting tools powered by LLMs will be added to Notepad.[17] Users will be able to rewrite selected text, adjust its length and modify its tone and format, similar toGrammarly's AI writing features.
The new features are available toWindows Insider members in the Canary and Dev Channels and will be available to all Windows 11 users at a later time.
Notepad is atext editor, i.e., an app specialized in editingplain text. It can edittext files (bearing the ".txt"filename extension) and compatible formats, such asbatch files,INI files, andlog files.
Notepad offers only the most basic text manipulation functions, such as finding and replacing text. UntilWindows ME, there were almost no keyboard shortcuts and no line-counting feature. Starting withWindows 2000, shortcuts for common commands like "New", "Open", and "Save" were added, as well as a status bar with a line counter (available only when word-wrap is disabled). BeforeWindows 10 version 1809, Notepad could not properly interpret eitherUnix-style orMac-stylenewline characters.[18] Windows 10 version 1809 also introduced theCtrl+← Backspace keyboard shortcut (deletes the previous word), zoom functionality, the ability to zoom in and out, and the "Search withBing" function.[19][20]
Improving performance has been the main focus of Notepad's development. As part of this effort, Notepad is capable of reading text files even when other apps have acquired arange-based lock on the file.[21]
OnWindows 95 and earlier, Notepad renders text files in theFixedsysfont. Starting withWindows NT 4.0 andWindows 98, it allows users to choose their own font to display the text. They cannot, however, select individual parts of the text and change their fonts.[22][23] Its default font changed toLucida Console onWindows 2000, andConsolas onWindows 8.
Notepad can print files. It allows customizing headers, footers, and margins before printing. The date, file name, and other information can be placed in the headers and footers with various codes consisting of an ampersand ('&') followed by a letter.[24]
Notepad accepts text from the Windowsclipboard, but only in the CF_TEXT format.[25] It strips the pasted text of any embedded font and style information. One could temporarily paste formatted text into Notepad, then immediately copy it again to obtain the raw text.
Notepad has a simple logging function. Each time it opens a file with ".LOG" on its first line, the app inserts a timestamp on the file's last line.[26][27]
SimpleMarkdown support was added in 2025.[28]
Notepad supports the followingcharacter encodings:
Starting with Windows 10 1809 Insider build, it supports Unix-style (LF) and Classic Mac OS -style (CR)line endings, along with the native DOS/Windows CRLF style. Before this, only CRLF line endings were recognized.[29]
Opening and editing in left-to-right and right-to-left based languages are done viaRichEdit controls andinput method editors, available in versions for Windows XP or later.
Notepad used a built-inwindow class namedEDIT. The maximum file size Notepad can open depends on operating system limitations on the size of theEDIT window class, with a different limit in each version of Windows. Because of this limitation, onWindows 3.0,Windows 3.1, andWindows 3.11, Notepad could not open files larger than 54 KB. (Microsoft recommended using another text editor for opening files larger than 45 KB.)[30] This limit was extended to 64 KB inWindows 95, with users now directed toWordPad for larger files. OnWindows XP, Notepad was limited to 32 MB and declined to open bigger files.[31] OnWindows 11, Notepad uses theRichEdit control.[32] The size limit was raised to about 1 GB, and attempting to open any file larger than that shows adialog box suggesting that the user open it with a different text editor.[33]
On theWindows NT family of operating systems (includingWindows 2000 andWindows XP), Notepad can detect Unicode files even when they lack abyte order mark. To do this, it calls theIsTextUnicode() function of theWindows API.[34] UntilWindows Vista, this function was imperfect, incorrectly identifying some all-lowercaseASCII text as UTF-16. As a result, Notepad interpreted a file containing a phrase like "aaaa aaa aaa aaaaa" ("4-3-3-5") as a two-byte-encoded Unicode text file. If a font with support for Chinese was installed, nine Chinese characters (桴獩愠灰挠湡戠敲歡) would display. Otherwise, it would display squaresubstitute characters instead of Chinese characters. This issue was resolved on Windows Vista and newer.[35][36]
Notepad lacks many basic features available in other text editors, such as block selection andMDI. There are many third-party replacements for Notepad with additional functionality, such as AkelPad,Metapad,Notepad++, Notepad2, andTED Notepad, which include features such as, but not limited to:
This is not the first time the app has appeared in the Microsoft Store. Originally announced in August last year, Notepad appeared for a while before vanishing.
To load a file, Notepad maps a view of the file as a memory-mapped file and uses that as the source. The code figures out the encoding, performs a code page conversion to UTF-16LE if necessary, puts the result in a memory block, and then uses the EM_SETHANDLE message to hand that entire block to the edit control.
