With the latest Windows 11 update, Notepad has finally arrived in its best form. Notepad has always been a handy app, sitting in the Windows installation folder, patiently waiting for those times when you need to quickly edit a text file or system file. However, it fell a bit short as a straight word processor, and its little brother, WordPad, was more noteworthy for its keyboard controls.

But WordPad went the way of Clippy, and Notepad became the only game in town that had just installed Windows. And Microsoft has been improving Notepad more and more in recent years. The tab feature, and the ability for the app to basically remember each tab from one launch to the next, has been very useful to me. The tabs feature was introduced last year, preceded by word wrapping and an improved search/replace dialog. And now, finally, spell checking is available.

The basic application, which has been largely untouched since its launch in 1983 as a program to support the release of the Microsoft mouse, is now thoroughly modern. Sure, underlining, bolding, strikeout, and italics are still not available, but in 2024, such needless emphasis would surely be considered vulgar by many right-thinking writers. And Microsoft must set up an upsell in Word.

The new spell checker has been in the dev and canary channels of various Windows Insider builds since March of this year, but is now beginning to roll out en masse to the public as Windows Notepad version 11.2405.13.0. While it may be a small thing to see a red line under misspelled or misspelled words, this is indicative of the continued development of the app and its modern usability as a daily virtual notepad.

The ability to automatically correct misspelled words can also be enabled, but importantly, the spell checker can also be disabled for certain file types, and by default it is disabled for file types commonly associated with coding

Important.

Importantly, none of the feature updates brought to Notepad change the essence of Notepad. Notepad is a simple, lightweight app that loads quickly and can be opened just as quickly as a physical notepad. And it still is.

For now, I'm happy enough to use it to write small news articles when I'm traveling away from a stable internet connection, but I'm starting to use it properly, as its name implies: a proper notepad. I've started using it as a scratchpad for jotting down ideas and plans and have it permanently in a corner of my screen, especially since I don't have to save a .txt file to keep a copy of everything, and I can have multiple tabs open at the same time even if I restart my PC.

I used to use LibreOffice when I used words offline, but I have been using Notepad for the past few months because of its simplicity. This is because I can access my files no matter where I am or what machine I am using.

So if there is one more new feature to be added to Notepad, it is exactly that: a consistent, seamless experience wherever I am logged in with my Microsoft account. And since I now use Notepad as a real virtual notepad, it would be useful to be able to paste screenshots as well.

Microsoft, are you listening?