- A former Microsoft software engineer created a lightweight alternative to Notepad
- TinyRetroPad goes back in time to avoid the bloat that Microsoft introduced to the text editor
- The engineer observes that the application has no overhead or telemetry, and that it is “just old-fashioned Windows, done right.”
Have you ever dreamed of the days when Notepad was a simple, mean text editing machine? If so, a software engineer who used to work at Microsoft just published something that might interest you.
The Register noticed that Dave Plummer – who was likely one of the many catalysts that sparked Microsoft’s Windows 11 repair 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 – the world’s “smallest possible full-featured Windows application”, no less).
TinyRetroPad is a fully functional text editor in the style of the original Notepad, completely streamlined and without bloat, so it’s small as the name suggests, weighing 2.5 KB.
Plummer explains that he doesn’t like Notepad the way it is, so he “rebuilt it from the ground up,” with: “No bloat. No telemetry. No nonsense. Just old-school Windows, done right.”
Analysis: note to Microsoft – unblock Notepad
In case you didn’t know, Notepad has been accused of being a heavy app for a while now, as Microsoft has expanded its features to cover all sorts of bases beyond what you’d expect from a basic text editor.
Of course, the problem is that WordPad – which was once the app that covered the middle ground between Notepad and Microsoft’s full-fledged Word – was discontinued in 2024. Since then, Microsoft has integrated more and more features into Notepad, which 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 are now worried that it will be bloated and end up becoming less and less responsive, and therefore less useful as a quick and easy editor that emphasizes convenience.
All of this means that some people have abandoned Notepad and looked for third-party alternatives for Windows 11. Of course, TinyRetroPad represents another such offering, albeit as pure and compact an alternative as you’ll find.
How come this app is so small? Essentially, the program can be extremely compact because it leverages the components already installed in Windows.
As Plummer explains: “TinyRetroPad is essentially a wrapper around the WinAPI RICHEDIT50W control. »
So, Plummer notes, if you want Notepad to be “exactly the way you might remember it” from the Windows XP era, that’s what TinyRetroPad does. I think the former Microsoft engineer may have a few takers on his hands.
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