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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] 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.

this post was submitted on 25 May 2025

108 points (97.4% liked)

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