If for some reason you’re stuck on windows, might I recommend notepad++ ?
Kate is great and available for Windows, too!
But also beware as notepad++ has had a security breach recently.
So has everything.
A text editor shouldn’t be having security breaches.
Technically it was the server for updates that got breached, not the editor itself.
Neither should Windows itself. But here we are. And have been for some time.
The people’s champion. Bloodied but unbowed.
They also introduced a critical security vulnerability into notepad where they just had the markdown links shell execute
open linkwhich allowed just installing arbitrary software as long as the link was valid instead of just opening a browser.If you managed to get the file onto a person’s you could execute it by having the person click on the link.
Isn’t notepad an LLM client now?
Feels like everything is. Might as well describe every app by it‘s (now) secondary function.
Waiting for the rename to copad AI.
CopePad
Notepad’s sole purpose is to remove formatting from copied text.
ctrl+shift+v is your friend
Doesn’t work everywhere…
it’s where most people started learning html
Wordpad? I’ll stick to Word Perfect 5.1, thank you very much.
Word.
(or actually, Word. The one that ran on DOS and looked like an Emo version on QBASIC. I liked that thing).
Tabs were a welcome addition, but that’s where the good idea train swiftly leaves the rails.
What we needed was a built-in hex editor, and maybe some better tools for working with unicode that you can’t just type in on whatever keyboard you have.
Instead, they turned it into WordPad, which we already have.
Its not even wordpad. It only supports markdown not rtf… it only exists so they could easily shove copilot into it.
True, but IMO it makes a lot more sense to support markdown under Wordpad than Notepad since the controls and doc-style layout/rendering support is already there.
it only exists so they could easily shove copilot into it.
I get the saltiness about Copilot but this is getting ridiculous.
It got dark mode, sessions, tabs, and a Markdown viewer. How are these bad changes? How do these “only exist so they could easily shove Copilot into” them?
(btw, you can disable Copilot from Notepad with three clicks)
notepad has formatting now? o_O
does it produce markdown or something?
It’s a UWP (i think? they renamed the platform twice already) vibecoded app now, notepad.exe still around.
I understand Notepad++ is pretty cool?
Unfortunately it has a use. Microsoft discontinued WordPad
I hated wordpad. New notepad is so much better than the old. An undo on old notepad would undo the last 1-7 sentences randomly, and wouldn’t redo. Remembering notes is also good, and I love markdown.
I don’t use the ai and it never was in the way of what I needed, so whatever.
the point and strength of notepad was that it opened immediately, no bullshit, you can write text and that’s all.
I suspect that’s not the case anymore.
As much as I liked old notepad, it is a pretty decent markdown editor.
I love most of the changes they made, but Copilot can fuck right off my Notepad. It’s supposed to be fast and offline.
I mean you’re right, but also look at what emacs or vim are doing on the linux side. Overloading your notepad application is hardly a concept birthed on Windows.
I’d argue the Linux equivalent is more something like nano, and I wouldn’t say nano is overloaded
wait what the frick since when were they updating Notepad
Since Microslop Windooze 11:Enshittified Edition.
Win 11 has been a privacy/anonymity/usability nightmare. Thanks in no small part to MS enshittifying absolutely every corner of it with AI. Right down to grabbing it by the notepad.
And that’s why I still run Win10 with 0patch.
So… they removed Wordpad to push people into using Word… and now they removed Notepad to push people into… this monstrosity? Why does Notepad support hyperlinks now?
Back when I used Notepad, it was to strip out rich text formatting and reliably get consistently distinct text, especially if I configured it to use a monospace font. Now I have to worry about embedded hyperlinks sending me to God-knows-where?
If you are stuck in Windows, use Notepad++.
