Over 40 years later, Windows' Notepad finally has spell check

Earlier this year, Microsoft killed WordPad—the free and surprisingly capable built-in word processor that debuted in Windows 95. For this, they must be punished. Yet while Microsoft taketh away, they also giveth.

After several months of testing, the Notepad text editor is finally getting spell check and auto-correct features. Maybe that’ll even things out.

We reported on this back in March when this upgrade to Notepad began rolling out to Windows 11 Insider builds. Now it appears that it’s done with testing and heading out to everyone (or at least about 20 percent of everyone since a lot of you are still on Windows 10).

The Verge notes that Notepad’s spell check feature appears to be there in the latest update—and sure enough, my own Notepad copy is showing those familiar red squiggly lines.

Other recent upgrades to Notepad include character counts in the lower task bar (but oddly not word counts), tabbed viewing for multiple files, and support for Windows dark mode. If you enable the Explain with Copilot feature, you can even get some generative AI in your text editor.

Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft

Why all this wasn’t worth adding to WordPad? I’ll never know… unless it’s just Microsoft trying to give people yet another nudge to pay for Office, which would be in character.

Notepad is a lot more than just the default text editor. It’s also the default viewer for a lot of essential program files, like the INI files used for configuration settings in a lot of Windows games.

So, I’m particularly impressed that Microsoft had the foresight to let you choose to automatically disable spell check on some file types. (Though the list of options is pretty short at the moment.)

Author: Michael Crider, Staff Writer, PCWorld

Michael is a 10-year veteran of technology journalism, covering everything from Apple to ZTE. On PCWorld he’s the resident keyboard nut, always using a new one for a review and building a new mechanical board or expanding his desktop “battlestation” in his off hours. Michael’s previous bylines include Android Police, Digital Trends, Wired, Lifehacker, and How-To Geek, and he’s covered events like CES and Mobile World Congress live. Michael lives in Pennsylvania where he’s always looking forward to his next kayaking trip.

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