- Windows 11 Notepad app shows off new features in testing
- These include a new AI twist and new formatting powers
- It’s unfortunate timing, as Notepad has been hit by a new bug in Windows 11, highlighting issues that Microsoft should really focus on.
Users of the iconic Notepad application fall into two camps: those who are happy that Microsoft is developing the Windows 11 application with new features, and those who hate this line of development and consider it bloating the software. If you fall into the latter camp, you won’t like the fact that Notepad has more features, and Paint does too.
Windows Central noticed that Microsoft revealed new versions of both of these apps during testing, with Notepad gaining additional formatting powers, as well as a new “welcome experience” and an extra touch of AI.
Formatting-wise, Notepad gets nested lists – indented subcategories within lists – and strikethrough functionality (drawing a line through text, which means crossing something out).
The new welcome experience is a panel that appears detailing the latest changes to Notepad, so you know what’s been recently added (or added since the app was last launched).
And finally, the AI change in Notepad is to the write, rewrite, and summarize features, which will now preview the answer provided by the AI in a faster manner. In short, you will be able to start reading the AI output faster.
Coming to Windows 11’s Paint app, the main change here is the new Coloring Book, which is again an AI feature, which allows you to create such a book 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 different pages.
Analysis: For me it goes beyond “bloat vs. functionality” and “development vs. fundamentals”
As noted at the start, the trio of changes to Notepad will probably either please you or infuriate you – unless you never use Notepad and don’t care about it. In any case, those who are worried about the basic text editor becoming bloated – and even much less basicwith a whole host of features added in recent times – won’t be happy with a pop-up release notes panel, nor additional formatting and AI nuances.
The problem is that eventually Notepad will be far from the simplified text editor that was the original concept, and it will load slower and be less responsive in general thanks to all these extra tweaks.
Part of the reason is that Microsoft is making up for the lack of WordPad in Windows 11, which was the intermediate app between Notepad and the full version of Word before Microsoft dropped it from Windows 11. So you can see where the software giant is coming from in this regard, although it does beg the question: why drop WordPad in the first place?
Regardless, the timing of this new version of Notepad is interesting because it arrives just as a frustrating bug in Windows 11 caused the app to crash for a number of people. (This is not just Notepad, but it is one of the affected software). The underlying problem appears to be a problem with the Microsoft Store – or perhaps other factors – but it’s clear that it’s not actually Notepad’s fault.
Despite this, the fact that Microsoft continues to create more and more very annoying bugs – some minor, some major, like this week’s app bugs – once again highlights the problem with the fundamentals of Windows 11 in relation to the development of the operating system.
That is to say, people want Microsoft to fix the basics with Windows 11, fixing all the interface bugs, quirks, and slowness, and generally getting its operating system up and running under the hood — which should (hopefully) mean fewer bugs showing up in the desktop OS. I don’t see how that wouldn’t be the case. And on top of that, Microsoft also needs to improve its quality assurance (QA) processes around updates to redouble its efforts to eliminate ongoing gremlins.
Most people want This occur beyond prioritizing new features in Windows 11 and its default apps like Notepad. Now I realize that Microsoft will never effectively freeze its operating system development, and I don’t think it’s necessary to go that far anyway – but it’s pretty clear that priorities need to be readjusted here. Stop worrying about cramming a lot more features, and especially AI features, into Windows 11, and start digging into the fundamentals and fixing things.
I would really like to see Microsoft acknowledge that the current state of Windows 11 is not good enough. Otherwise, the nickname “Microslop” could persist and there would be (further) reputational damage in terms of public perception of the quality of Windows 11. Perhaps irreparable damage, no doubt.
Microsoft must not forget that the reputation of the OS is closely linked to the success of its great effort in favor of AI. People need to trust Microsoft’s AI agents to run amok on their PCs and be comfortable granting them access to their personal files, and that won’t happen if Windows 11 is seen as a flawed desktop platform limping along, hamstrung by poor quality assurance and testing and suffering from a constant stream of bugs.
To reiterate, I’m not saying that Microsoft should totally put the brakes on the development of new features or AI capabilities – because it’s clear that that will never happen. But I’m going to continue to argue that there needs to be a better balance between these new incoming features and maintaining all the existing stuff – because what Microsoft is currently doing just isn’t working, not for me, and not for many others.
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