- A former Microsoft software engineer has created a lightweight alternative to Notepad
- TinyRetroPad turns back the clock to avoid the bloat that Microsoft has introduced to the text editor
- The engineer notes that the app has no overhead or telemetry, and is “just old-school Windows done right.”
Have you ever longed for the days when Notepad was a simple, mean text editing machine? If so, a software engineer who used to work at Microsoft just posted something that might interest you.
The Register noted that Dave Plummer, who was likely one of the many catalysts that sparked Microsoft’s Windows 11 fix campaign, created TinyRetroPad. (It’s a fork of Matt Power’s Dave’s Tiny Editor or DTE, which, in turn, was built on top of Plummer’s HelloAssembly, nothing less than the world’s “smallest possible full Windows application.”)
TinyRetroPad is a fully functional text editor in the style of the original Notepad, fully optimized and without all the bloat, so it’s, well, small as the name suggests, weighing in at 2.5KB.
Plummer explains that he doesn’t like Notepad as is, so he “rebuilt it from the ground up,” with: “No frills. No telemetry. No nonsense. Just old-school Windows done right.”
Analysis: note for Microsoft – debloat Notepad
In case you don’t know, Notepad has been accused of being a bloated app for quite some time now, as Microsoft has expanded its features to cover all sorts of bases beyond what you’d expect from what’s supposed to be a basic text editor.
Of course, the problem is that WordPad, which used to be the app that covered the middle ground between Notepad and Microsoft’s full Word, was abandoned in 2024. Since then, Microsoft has packed more and more features into Notepad in what essentially covers the removal of WordPad.
The problem is that this is very much at odds with Notepad’s core philosophy of being a lightweight text editor, and Windows 11 users now fear that it will be bloated and will eventually end up becoming less and less responsive and therefore less useful as a quick and easy convenience-first editor.
What all this means is that some people have abandoned Notepad and looked for third-party alternatives for Windows 11. Of course, TinyRetroPad represents another such offering, although it’s as pure and compact an alternative as you’ll find.
How come this app is so small? Basically, the program can be extremely compact because it takes advantage of the components already installed in Windows.
As Plummer explains: “TinyRetroPad is basically a wrapper for the RICHEDIT50W WinAPI control.”
So, Plummer notes, if you want Notepad to be “exactly how you remember it” from the Windows XP era, here’s what TinyRetroPad does. I think the former Microsoft engineer may have some takers on his hands.
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