Skip to main content

Microsoft is updating the Windows Notepad app for the first time in years

Microsoft is updating the Windows Notepad app for the first time in years

/

A surprise for Windows users

Share this story

Microsoft is giving its Notepad app for Windows a surprising amount of new features. While the software giant hasn’t updated Notepad for years, the next Windows 10 update will include some highly requested additions. Microsoft is clearly listening to Windows 10 users who use notepad for development, logs, or simple text manipulation.

You’ll soon be able to do wrap around find and replace alongside the ability to zoom into text by holding down the ctrl key and using the mouse wheel to zoom in and out. Microsoft is also adding in extended line ending support so that Unix/Linux line endings (LF) and Macintosh line endings (CR) are supported in Notepad. The status bar will now be enabled by default in Notepad, and it includes the ability to display line and column numbers when word-wrap is enabled.

Microsoft is also finally adding in ctrl+backspace support to delete a previous word in Notepad, and performance improvements for large files. You can now even search for words on Bing through Notepad by simply right clicking on them to get a new option. Microsoft’s Notepad additions follow the company updating its Windows Console for the first time in 20 years, and the surprise addition of the Linux command line to Windows 10.

These new Notepad features will appear in the update currently codenamed Redstone 5, which is expected to debut later this year. Microsoft is now putting the finishing touches on the next major Windows 10 update, but it won’t include the popular tabs (Sets) feature for File Explorer and other apps.