- Windows 11 Notepad app has some new features in testing
- These include a new twist on AI and new formatting powers.
- It’s unfortunate timing, as Notepad has been hit by a new bug in Windows 11, highlighting issues around what Microsoft should really focus on.
Users of the iconic Notepad app are divided into two camps: those who are happy that Microsoft is developing the Windows 11 app with new features and those who hate that line of development and consider it to be bloating the software. If you fall into the latter camp, you won’t like the fact that Notepad has more capabilities and so does Paint.
Windows Central noted that Microsoft revealed new versions of both apps during testing, with Notepad getting some additional formatting powers, as well as a new “welcome experience” and an extra dash of AI.
As for formatting, Notepad includes nested lists (indented subcategories within lists) and a strikethrough capability (drawing a line through the text, i.e. crossing something out).
The new welcome experience is a panel that appears that details the latest changes to Notepad, so you know what’s been added recently (or added since you last started the app).
And finally, the AI change in Notepad is for the Write, Rewrite, and Summarize functions, which will now launch a preview of the answer the AI provides in a faster way. In short, you will be able to start reading the AI output more quickly.
As for Windows 11’s Paint app, the main change here is the new coloring book, which again is an AI feature, allowing you to create one of those books based on a theme.
So if you want to create a coloring book about, say, space whales flying through the solar system (why not?), you can ask the AI to create one and it will create the various pages.
Analysis: To me, this goes beyond “inflation vs. functionality” and encompasses “development vs. fundamentals.”
As noted at the beginning, the trio of changes for Notepad will probably either please you or infuriate you, unless you never use Notepad and don’t care. In any case, those worried about the basic text editor becoming bloated (and, in fact, much less so) essentialWith a host of newly added features, you won’t be happy with a pop-up release notes panel or more formatting and AI nuances.
The concern is that eventually, Notepad will end up being far from the streamlined text editor it was originally in concept, and will load more slowly and be less responsive overall thanks to all of these extra cuts.
Part of this is Microsoft making up for the lack of WordPad in Windows 11, which was the middle app between Notepad and the full version of Word before Microsoft removed it from Windows 11. So you can see where the software giant is coming from in that regard, although it begs the question: why abandon WordPad in the first place?
Regardless, the timing of this new version of Notepad is interesting because it comes just as a frustrating bug in Windows 11 has caused the app to crash for several people. (This is not just Notepad, of course, but it is one of the affected programs.) The underlying issue appears to be an issue with the Microsoft Store, or possibly other factors, but it’s pretty clear that it’s not actually Notepad’s fault.
Still, the fact that Microsoft continues to create increasingly annoying bugs (some minor, some major, like this week’s app-crashing antics) points again to the question of the fundamentals of Windows 11 versus the development of the operating system.
That is, people want Microsoft to fix the basics with Windows 11, fixing all the interface bugs, oddities, and slowness, and generally making its operating system work properly under the hood, which (hopefully) should mean fewer bugs appearing in the desktop OS. I don’t see how I wouldn’t. And on top of that, Microsoft also needs to improve its quality assurance (QA) processes around updates to redouble its efforts to root out gremlins in the pipeline.
Most people want this This will happen beyond prioritizing the new features coming to Windows 11 and its default apps like Notepad. Now, I realize that Microsoft will never effectively freeze development of its operating system, and I don’t think it should go that far anyway, but it’s pretty clear that priorities need to be realigned here. Stop worrying about interfering with many more capabilities, and especially AI features, in Windows 11, and start digging deeper into the fundamentals and fixing things.
I would really like to see some recognition from Microsoft that the state of Windows 11 right now is not good enough. Otherwise, the ‘Microslop’ moniker could persist and there will be (more) reputational damage in terms of public perception of the quality of Windows 11. Perhaps irreparable damage, possibly.
Microsoft should not forget that the reputation of the operating system is closely tied to the success of its big push with AI. People need to trust Microsoft’s AI agents to be loose on their PC and feel comfortable giving them access to their personal files, and that won’t happen considering Windows 11 is a malfunctioning desktop platform that limps along, hamstrung by poor testing and QA and suffering from a constant stream of bugs.
To reiterate, I’m not saying that Microsoft should completely stop developing new AI features or functionality, because clearly that will never happen. But I’m going to continue to push the idea that there needs to be a better balance between new incoming features and maintaining all the existing stuff, because what Microsoft is doing now simply isn’t working, for me and for many others.
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