No matter else you’ll be able to say about Home windows 11—and no matter you consider its pushy tendencies and the Copilot function that has been rolled out to just about everybody regardless of being labeled a “preview”—the working system has ushered in a little bit of a renaissance for decades-old built-in apps like Paint and Notepad.
Notepad’s growth particularly has been hanging; it had gotten small under-the-hood updates through the years, however in some ways, the model that was nonetheless in Home windows 11 at launch in 2021 was the identical app that Microsoft shipped with Home windows XP, Home windows 95, Home windows 3.1, and even Home windows 1.0.
An up to date model of Notepad presently rolling out to Home windows Insiders within the Canary and Dev channels is including two extra fashionable options to the previous app: spellcheck and autocorrect. Per ordinary, spellcheck in Notepad highlights misspellings with crimson squiggly underlines, and right-clicking the phrase or urgent Shift + F10 will pop up a brief menu of steered fixes.
Recognizing that Notepad is usually used to view or edit log or config recordsdata, Microsoft says that spellcheck “is off by default in log recordsdata and different file sorts usually related to coding.” Spellcheck might be enabled or disabled for any given file kind (or for particular person recordsdata) in Notepad’s settings. Particular person phrases can be ignored in that doc or added to your dictionary so that they’ll at all times be ignored in each doc you open.
In case you’re upgrading from the Home windows 10 model of Notepad, the spellcheck and autocorrect options be a part of the tabbed interface, redesigned Settings display, an auto-resume function, and a handful of different tips that the app has discovered all through Home windows 11’s growth.
Notepad remains to be properly wanting turning into a wealthy textual content editor, however there’s room for it to choose up a number of extra fundamental textual content and doc enhancing options since Microsoft formally killed off WordPad in a latest Home windows 11 replace. In contrast to Notepad, WordPad had been principally left alone since a Home windows 7-era refresh that added a consumer interface ribbon just like the one within the (then-current) Workplace 2007 replace. Free of charge-of-charge wealthy textual content enhancing, Microsoft pushes customers towards the net model of Microsoft Phrase as a substitute.
Microsoft is presently testing Home windows 11 24H2 within the Canary and Dev Home windows Insider channels, a preview of this fall’s main replace that can mark the working system’s third anniversary. Updates to Notepad and different apps may roll out earlier than then, although, in line with Microsoft’s “launch them after they’re prepared” method to function additions within the Home windows 11 period.
Home windows Insiders additionally acquired some new Paint options earlier this month; Microsoft tweaked the way in which the comb dimension selector works and has added the choice to designate one among your picture layers because the background layer. Wonders by no means stop.