Open Source software is software with source code that anyone can inspect, modify or enhance. Freeware products can be used free of charge for both personal and professional (commercial use). Everyone else will likely have to wait a little bit to get it, but it’s nice to see Microsoft continue the trend of updating some of its built-in apps like Notepad, Photos, and Paint alongside its bigger products like Office and, of course, Windows.Freeware programs can be downloaded used free of charge and without any time limitations. If you’re running the test version of the OS and don’t see it, you may want to check for an update in the Microsoft Store. The Notepad redesign should be available for Windows 11 Insiders using the Dev channel. docx files, unlike even the new version of NotePad.) That seems like the right move to me, given the existence of Notepads’ perhaps lesser-known sibling WordPad, which is closer to Microsoft Word than a plaintext editor.

It seems like Microsoft is focused on smaller updates to make Notepad feel less like a relic, rather than stuffing it full of new features and turning it into an entirely different app.

It’s got a new home in the View menu, though - and with the Font button going to the Edit dropdown, the old Notepad’s “Format” menu is no more. Notepad’s new undo system is an improvement, but it’d be hard to call it modern.Īnother unfortunate thing about the preview is that Word Wrap is still off by default. It still doesn’t work like you might expect a modern app to, letting you hit Ctrl-Z to delete one word at a time, but it clearly has more memory than the old version of Notepad. Microsoft also says it’s adding multi-step undo, which replaces the old version’s undo system that only lets you go back one step. Find and Replace still has some quirks in the preview (like not automatically wrapping), but it’s definitely a more modern experience. The redesign combines them into one floating bar instead of something that looks like it’s from the XP era. In the current version of the app that ships with Windows 11, the text search tool and the find and replace tool are two different pop-up windows, accessed by two different keyboard shortcuts. While the visual updates like the addition of dark mode, updated right-click menu, and Windows’ new theme-adopting material are nice, the functional updates will probably be the biggest upgrade to anyone who actually writes in Notepad. Microsoft is testing a redesign of its venerable Notepad app, adding some welcomed modern features like a dark mode, a better search / find and replace interface, better undoing, and more.

Old windows notepad download