Microsoft is including textual content formatting to its Home windows Notepad app. The numerous Notepad update is available for Canary and Dev Channel testers on Home windows 11, and introduces daring and italic styling, alongside hyperlinks and even Markdown help.
The addition of textual content formatting in Notepad means there’s now a formatting toolbar on the high of the app, alongside the present File, Edit, and View choices. The toolbar contains entry to daring, italic, and hyperlink choices, but it surely additionally contains help for lists and headings.
“The expertise helps Markdown type enter and information for customers preferring to work immediately with the light-weight markup language,” explains Dave Grochocki, principal product supervisor lead for Microsoft’s Home windows inbox apps. “You’ll be able to swap between formatted Markdown and Markdown syntax views within the view menu or by choosing the toggle button within the standing bar on the backside of the window.”
Since Notepad is often used with plain textual content, you may also simply clear all formatting from the formatting toolbar or from the edit menu within the app. In the event you’re not a fan of the light-weight formatting choices, you may also totally disable this new help within the Notepad app settings.
This formatting addition to Notepad comes only a week after Microsoft began testing a brand new function within the app that may generate textual content for you utilizing AI. The brand new Write function in Notepad can be utilized to “shortly draft textual content primarily based in your immediate,” and alongside these formatting choices Notepad is beginning to look much more like Microsoft Phrase.
Like I wrote in my Notepad e-newsletter earlier this week, it’s superb that Microsoft barely touched Notepad for many years, and now it’s gone from fundamental log file reader to writing messages itself.