Notepad (25H2)

Microsoft has overhauled its Notepad text editor dramatically in Windows 11, adding numerous new features related to document management, formatting, and even AI-based writing help. But those pining for the simpler Notepad of the good old days can disable most of the new features, too, thanks to the app’s granular customization capabilities.

⚙️ Defaults

Notepad provides a tabbed-based user interface, similar to that of a web browser. This lets you to view multiple documents—in this case, plain text files—each in its own tab by default, rather than opening each in a new app window as was the case before.

Notepad also offers some basic session state management capabilities. If you close Notepad with one or more documents and then re-open the app, those documents will appear once again and in the same saved or unsaved state by default. And thanks to a Recent files item that appears in the File menu by default, you can quickly find the most recent several text files you’ve worked with.

? For those who need help writing, Notepad now offers extensive AI-based writing tools by default, with options for rewriting existing text, summarizing text, making text longer or shorter, changing the tone, and changing the format. There are also spell checking and autocorrect features enabled by default.

➡️ Learn more: You can learn more about these writing features later in the chapter.

? Starting in Windows 11 version 25H2, Notepad also supports the ? Markdown markup language, which lets you add light formatting—bold, italics, headings, and more—to plain text documents. This feature is enabled by default, sao you will see formatting toolbar buttons in the top center of the app.

➡️ Learn more: You can learn more about Notepad’s support for Markdown later in the chapter.

? Customize

Depending on your needs and preferences, you may want to change some of the default settings used by Notepad. These are accessible via the app settings page, which you can see by clicking the “Settings” (gear) button at the right of Notepad’s toolbar.

Key behaviors you can configure here include:

The app theme. By default, Notepad will default to the app theme–Light or Dark–you configure globally in Windows 11. But you can use the App theme expander to manually choose the Light or Dark theme instead if you prefer.

The font displayed in the Notepad text editor. Notepad supports plain text only, so none of these options impact the documents you create. But you can configure the font used to edit text to your liking using the options found in the Font expander.

Whether to (optionally) use Markdown for formatting. While Notepad will always default to saving files with a .txt extension, you can optionally use Markdown formatting commands in the text and create what most would call Markdown documents (which are still plain text, of course). If you toggle the Formatting option to off, Notepad will no longer display its formatting toolbar buttons.

Whether to open new documents in a new tab or a new window. Notepad opens new documents in a new tab in the same app window by default, but you can configure the Opening files option to “Open in a new window” if you prefer Notepad to work as it used to, with every document in its own app window.

What happens when Notepad starts. By default, Notepad will remember which documents you had open when you closed the app and it will then reopen them when you start Notepad again. This means that you won’t be prompted to save an unsaved document unless you attempt to close it manually. If you configure the “When Notepad starts option” to “Start new session and discard unsaved changes,” Notepad will behave as it did previously: If you try to close Notepad while one or more documents are unsaved, it will prompt you to save those documents, and when you restart Notepad, it will appear with a single new document.

Whether to reopen documents you were previously working on. Notepad keeps a list of your most recently opened documents in a “Recent files” submenu under the “File” menu. But you can toggle the “Recent Files” option to “Off” if you don’t need that feature.

Whether to use Copilot-based AI capabilities. By default, Notepad displays a Copilot button in its toolbar, to the left of the Settings , that provides a menu of useful AI-based writing tools. And similar choices appear when you right-click the text editor in Notepad. If you would prefer to not have access to this functionality, configure “Copilot” to “Off.”

➡️ Learn more: The only major new feature in Notepad that you can’t disable using the app’s settings interface is its tabs support. But there is a workaround to that issue that may appeal to some readers. You can learn more in the section Restore Notepad to its classic look and feel.

? Format a document with Markdown

Markdown is a lightweight markup syntax for adding formatting to plain text documents that’s now supported in Markdown. It’s similar to HTML or XML, if you’re familiar with those markup languages, but it’s easier to write and read. Indeed, one of the goals of Markdown is that it be both human- and machine-readable. But Notepad takes a step towards a word processor-like WYSIWYG display by applying the underlying visual styles to formatted text.

ℹ️ More info: I wrote this book, as with all my books from the previous decade or more, using Markdown.

In Markdown, formatting is typically expressed by using elements like # for a Heading 1 and ** for bold. But because most people don’t know this syntax, Notepad provides a set of formatting toolbar buttons, similar to those found in Microsoft Word and other word processors. If you know Markdown, most of the elements you’re used to using for formatting do not work in Notepad, though the app can correctly display existing Markdown documents. Instead, you must use Microsoft Word-type keyboard shortcuts or the toolbar buttons, as described below, to format text.

Available formatting commands include:

Headings. Notepad supports several heading styles, including Title, Subtitle, Heading, Subheading, Section, Subsection, and Body. But none of these are standard Markdown, and the latter isn’t even a heading style. In short, Title corresponds to Heading 1 in Markdown, Subtitle is really Heading 2, and so on. And the Body “heading” style is what’s called Paragraph in Markdown. It’s just normal, unstyled text.

Lists. Notepad supports bulleted and numbered lists, as you would expect, and you can increase or decreate the indentation on either as needed. You can also start a bulleted list by typing a dash (-) character, and you can start a numbered list by typing a number followed by a period (like 1.) and then a space. (That, at least, is standard Markdown and works normally in Notepad.)

Bold. You can bold a text selection by typing Ctrl + B.

Italics. You can italicize a text selection by typing Ctrl + I.

Strikethrough. You can strikethrough a text selection by typing Ctrl + Shift + X.

Link. You can create a hyperlink to a web URL by selecting some text and typing Ctrl + K.

Table. Notepad helps you make simple text-based tables using a graphical grid similar to that in Microsoft Word. Once you have a table in place in a document, you can then insert columns and rows where needed, select the entire table or a column or row, and delete the entire table or a column or row using an Edit table entry in the Table drop-down.

Clear formatting. This rather dangerous button will remove all the Markdown-based formatting from any selected text, and it will do so without confirming first. You can also type Ctrl + Space if you prefer keyboard shortcuts.

? Use Copilot to help you write

Though Copilot and AI are controversial for some, AI-based writing tools like those now offered in Notepad are quite useful. You access these options via the rainbow-colored Copilot button in the Notepad toolbar. You can use these options with the entire document in Notepad or by selecting some text and working with that section instead.

✅ Tip: The AI-based writing tools you see in the Copilot menu in Notepad aren’t free: They require you to sign into the app with your Microsoft account (MSA) and for you to have an active Microsoft 365 subscription, in which case you have a monthly allotment of AI credits–yes, really–that can be used for this type of activity. Or, if you have a Copilot+ PC, you can switch to a local AI model that is less powerful but has unlimited generation capabilities that don’t require you to spend (or even have) AI credits.

Available AI-based writing tools in Notepad include:

Write. This option creates text for based on a prompt that you write, like I need to write a blog post that explains how Markdown works. Once that text is generated, you can then keep the text, write a prompt to change the generated text in some way, or try again (in which case Copilot will generate new text to meet the needs of your original prompt).

Rewrite. This appears after you’ve used Copilot to generate text so you can rewrite that text with length (shorter, longer), tone (formal, casual, and more), and format (business, marketing, academic, and so on) options.

Summarize. As you would expect, this option summarizes a document or selected text so you can copy it to the Clipboard or insert the summary into the document.

Make shorter and Make longer. These options do what you’d expect as well, but they offer the same length, tone, and format options as Rewrite too.

Change tone and Change format. These options let you rewrite text for tone or format, and you can access the same length, tone, and format options as Rewrite with each generation until you get exactly what you’re looking for.

Restore Notepad to its classic look and feel

This isn’t well known, but Microsoft actually includes two versions of Notepad with Windows 11: The modern Notepad discussed in this chapter and the classic version of the app that it used to ship with previous Windows versions. The modern Notepad is objectively more full-featured than the classic version, and you can disable almost all of its new features if desired. But if you don’t like the modern look and feel or just want to use the classic Notepad instead, you can.

Doing so is a multi-step process:

• Open the Settings app and navigate to Apps > Advanced app settings > App execution aliases. Then, locate Notepad in the (non-alphabetical) list and configure it to “Off.”
• Open File Explorer and navigate to C:Windows\ and the locate the executable file Notepad.exe. If you double-click this executable to run it, you will see the classic Notepad appear. This happens because you disabled the modern Notepad app alias in the previous step. Normally, the modern new Notepad would appear instead.

• To make the classic Notepad more easily accessible, you can right-click Notepad.exe and choose “Pin to Start.” Or, you can right-click it and choose “Copy as path” and then use that to create a shortcut to this app on your Desktop.

What you can’t do, sadly, is make classic Notepad the default app for text files. Nor can you right-click a text file, choose “Open with” and then select classic Notepad.t