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In 3.5 years, Notepad.exe has gone from “barely maintained” to “it writes for you” (arstechnica.com)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I first ran into the Copilot integration in Notepad a couple of days ago and immediately turned it right the fuck off.

In November, Microsoft began testing an update that allowed users to rewrite or summarize text in Notepad using generative AI. Another preview update today takes it one step further, allowing you to write AI-generated text from scratch with basic instructions (the feature is called Write, to differentiate it from the earlier Rewrite).

Like Rewrite and Summarize, Write requires users to be signed into a Microsoft Account, because using it requires you to use your monthly allotment of Microsoft's AI credits. Per this support page, users without a paid Microsoft 365 subscription get 15 credits per month. Subscribers with Personal and Family subscriptions get 60 credits per month instead.

Microsoft notes that all AI features in Notepad can be disabled in the app's settings, and obviously, they won't be available if you use a local account instead of a Microsoft Account.

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[-] [email protected] 94 points 1 week ago

"Barely maintained"

Notepad was a very simple application. Did it even need more effoet put into it? Looks more like they fixed what was not broken.

[-] [email protected] 33 points 1 week ago

I like dark mode and tabs. Now I actually use it a lot more. I don't like adding a gibberish generator...

[-] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago

They should've stopped at support for utf-8 encoding and unix line endings.

[-] [email protected] 18 points 1 week ago

This. It needed absolutely nothing added to it. You could write text files, what more did anyone ever need from it? The app was done. It was ready.

This is a concept that is not even in the vocabulary of IT companies these days and I can understand it for complex systems that have dependencies up the wazoo but notepad was just a notepad and that was good enough.

[-] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago

There were a few things that it eventually got but lacked for way too long like support for UNIX line endings.

[-] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

It was definitely lacking in core areas. Large files, better search, possibly spell check (and why isn't spell check core Windows functionality?). It also could have used better handling for non-Windows text files. But overall, yes, this wasn't a program that needed a dedicated team to manage or improve.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

(and why isn’t spell check core Windows functionality?)

It actually is, introduced in Windows 8, it's just taken devs ages to actually start using it (Notepad only got it last year, 12 years after it was introduced)

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Do all that but just without all the AI crap.
Thank you very much.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

If Windows was actually good, you could have it take a question and paste the results into Notepad without having to add AI there. If it was really good, the AI segment would be optional.

this post was submitted on 25 May 2025

107 points (97.3% liked)

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