Notepad received a signifiant overhaul with the first release of Windows 11, but Microsoft isn’t done rolling out updates. Two more features are now on the way: a character count and a context menu option.
Microsoft is rolling out Notepad version 11.2311.29.0 to people in the Windows Insiders program running the Canary and Dev channels. The main improvement in this release is a new character count indicator, which appears next to the existing line and column indicators in the bottom status bar.
The blog post explains, “Keep track of your document’s length with the new character count display in the status bar. When text is selected, the status bar shows the character count for both the selected text and the entire document. If no text is selected, the character count for the entire document is displayed, ensuring you always have a clear view of your document’s length.”
The same update also introduces a new “Edit with Notepad” option in the right-click context menu in File Explorer. When you open the context menu on a file, the option will appear near the bottom of the list. The third-party Notepad++ editor added a similar menu option back in March for Windows 11 PCs. Several text editors, including Notepad++, already had a quick edit option on Windows 10 and earlier releases (because the menu was reworked for Windows 11).
The quick edit option is a bit of a strange addition, considering Notepad should already appear in the “Open with” submenu for supported files, so it’s making the context menu longer to potentially save one click. Windows 11 also doesn’t (currently) have an easy way to eradicate or add those app-specific menu items.
These aren’t the only recent additions to Notepad. Microsoft added automatic file saving back in September, and the long-awaited tabbed window maintain was added in February. The initial release of Windows 11 in 2021 introduced the new Notepad with a more modern interface, dark mode maintain, multi-level undo, and an upgraded find-and-substitute feature.
The new features for Notepad are still being tested with Insiders, but they should roll out to all PCs in a few weeks if there are no major bugs discovered.
Source: Windows Insider Blog
