notepad

notepad.exe,-now-an-actively-maintained-app,-has-gotten-its-inevitable-ai-update

Notepad.exe, now an actively maintained app, has gotten its inevitable AI update

AI, microsoft, notepad, paint, Prism, Tech, Windows 11, windows 11 24h2, windows insider / /

Among the decades-old Windows apps to get renewed attention from Microsoft during the Windows 11 era is Notepad, the basic built-in text editor that was much the same in early 2021 as it had been in the ’90 and 2000s. Since then, it has gotten a raft of updates, including a visual redesign, spellcheck and autocorrect, and window tabs.

Given Microsoft’s continuing obsession with all things AI, it’s perhaps not surprising that the app’s latest update (currently in preview for Canary and Dev Windows Insiders) is a generative AI feature called Rewrite that promises to adjust the length, tone, and phrasing of highlighted sentences or paragraphs using generative AI. Users will be offered three rewritten options based on what they’ve highlighted, and they can select the one they like best or tell the app to try again.

Rewrite appears to be based on the same technology as the Copilot assistant, since it uses cloud-side processing (rather than your local CPU, GPU, or NPU) and requires Microsoft account sign-in to work. The initial preview is available to users in the US, France, the UK, Canada, Italy, and Germany.

If you don’t care about AI or you don’t sign in with a Microsoft account, note that Microsoft is also promising substantial improvements in launch time with this version of Notepad. “Most users will see app launch times improve by more than 35 percent, with some users seeing improvements of 55 percent or more,” reads the blog post by Microsoft’s Windows apps manager Dave Grochocki.

Notepad.exe, now an actively maintained app, has gotten its inevitable AI update Read More »

notepad’s-spellcheck-and-autocorrect-are-rolling-out-to-everybody-after-41-years

Notepad’s spellcheck and autocorrect are rolling out to everybody after 41 years

microsoft, notepad, Tech, Windows 11, windows 11 23h2, windows 11 24h2 / /

notrpad spelchexk —

It’s still bare-bones by most standards, but Notepad has evolved a lot recently.

–

  • Testing spellcheck in the latest version of Windows Notepad.

  • Right-clicking and expanding the Spelling menu also presents more options.

    Andrew Cunningham

  • Like other recent Notepad additions, spellcheck and autocorrect can be tweaked or disabled entirely in the settings.

    Andrew Cunningham

In March, Microsoft started testing an update to the venerable Notepad app that added spellcheck and autocorrect to the app’s limited but slowly growing set of capabilities. The update that adds these features to Notepad is now rolling out to all Windows 11 users via the Microsoft Store, as reported by The Verge.

The spellcheck feature underlines words in red when they’re misspelled, and users can either left-click the words to see a list of suggestions or right-click words and see suggestions under a separate “spelling” menu item. Autocorrect works automatically to fix minor and obvious misspellings (typing “misspellign” instead of “misspelling,” for example), and changes can be reverted manually or by using the Undo command.

Either feature can be disabled from within Notepad’s settings. The spellchecker can also be switched on and off for a few different individual file extensions in case you want to see spelling suggestions for .txt files but not for .md or .lic files. The Verge also reports that spellchecking is turned off by default for log files or “other file types associated with coding.” Neither feature worked when I opened a batch file in Notepad to edit it, for example.

Microsoft often rolls out new app updates gradually, so you may or may not be seeing the new features yet. I can currently see the spellcheck and autocorrect features in Notepad version 11.2405.13.0 running on a fully updated Windows 11 23H2 PC, but your mileage may vary.

Notepad has received several updates over the course of the Windows 11 era, starting with dark mode support and other theme options. Eventually, it also added a tabbed interface that supported automatically reopening files when relaunching the app. These kinds of additions count as “major” for Notepad, which for years had only received relatively minor under-the-hood updates (when it was being updated at all).

The Notepad improvements come as Microsoft prepares to stop shipping WordPad with Windows 11. WordPad was previously Windows’ preinstalled basic word processor, but it has seen few (if any) significant updates since Windows 7 was released in 2009. WordPad is still available in Windows 11 22H2 and 23H2, but is no longer included in current versions of the upcoming Windows 11 24H2 update. After WordPad is gone, users looking for basic word processing will need to look to the more-capable Notepad, the free-to-use online version of Microsoft Word, or a free alternative like LibreOffice.

Notepad’s spellcheck and autocorrect are rolling out to everybody after 41 years Read More »

windows-notepad’s-midlife-renaissance-continues-with-spellcheck-and-autocorrect

Windows Notepad’s midlife renaissance continues with spellcheck and autocorrect

notepad, Tech, Windows 11 / /

noteworthy —

Now Windows’ only built-in text editor, there’s more room for Notepad to grow.

–

Enlarge / “Notepad.exe but with spellcheck” looks pretty much exactly like you’d expect it to.

Microsoft

Whatever else you can say about Windows 11—and whatever you think about its pushy tendencies and the Copilot feature that has been rolled out to pretty much everyone despite being labeled a “preview”—the operating system has ushered in a bit of a renaissance for decades-old built-in apps like Paint and Notepad.

Notepad’s development in particular has been striking; it had gotten small under-the-hood updates over the years, but in many ways, the version that was still in Windows 11 at launch in 2021 was the same app that Microsoft shipped with Windows XP, Windows 95, Windows 3.1, or even Windows 1.0.

An updated version of Notepad currently rolling out to Windows Insiders in the Canary and Dev channels is adding two more modern features to the old app: spellcheck and autocorrect. Per usual, spellcheck in Notepad highlights misspellings with red squiggly underlines, and right-clicking the word or pressing Shift + F10 will pop up a short menu of suggested fixes.

Recognizing that Notepad is often used to view or edit log or config files, Microsoft says that spellcheck “is off by default in log files and other file types typically associated with coding.” Spellcheck can be enabled or disabled for any given file type (or for individual files) in Notepad’s settings. Individual words can also be ignored in that document or added to your dictionary so they’ll always be ignored in every document you open.

If you’re upgrading from the Windows 10 version of Notepad, the spellcheck and autocorrect features join the tabbed interface, redesigned Settings screen, an auto-resume feature, and a handful of other tricks that the app has learned throughout Windows 11’s development.

Notepad is still well short of becoming a rich text editor, but there’s room for it to pick up a few more basic text and document editing features since Microsoft formally killed off WordPad in a recent Windows 11 update. Unlike Notepad, WordPad had been mostly left alone since a Windows 7-era refresh that added a user interface ribbon like the one in the (then-current) Office 2007 update. For free-of-charge rich text editing, Microsoft pushes users toward the online version of Microsoft Word instead.

Microsoft is currently testing Windows 11 24H2 in the Canary and Dev Windows Insider channels, a preview of this fall’s major update that will mark the operating system’s third anniversary. Updates to Notepad and other apps could roll out before then, though, in keeping with Microsoft’s “release them when they’re ready” approach to feature additions in the Windows 11 era.

Windows Insiders also got some new Paint features earlier this month; Microsoft tweaked the way the brush size selector works and has added the option to designate one of your image layers as the background layer. Wonders never cease.

Windows Notepad’s midlife renaissance continues with spellcheck and autocorrect Read More »