Windows Notepad is now a better Markdown text editor

Notepad has been overhauled with a modern interface and new features alongside Windows 11, and Microsoft has continued to update it. Now the text editor gets even more Markdown editing features and a few other changes.

Markdown is a popular way to use rich text formatting in plain text documents, using symbols such as number signs (#) for headings, asterisks.

or underscores (_) for bold text and square brackets for links. It is most frequently used in software development and documentation, but it is also used by note-taking applications like Obsidian and Apple Notes. Many generative AI tools can read and write Markdown.

Markdown features in Notepad

Credit: Microsoft

It’s a bit surprising that support for nested lists isn’t already available in Notepad. If you need a free Markdown text editor for your Windows PC, you’re still better off using Visual Studio Code or Notepad++ (with the Markdown++ plugin).

Notepad home page

Credit: Microsoft

Finally, you may not want the AI ​​writing features in Notepad, but they won’t go away. The latest update improved support for streaming results, so text generation in the write, rewrite, and summarize features will start appearing before the result is complete. You must still sign in with a Microsoft account to use these features, even if text generation takes place on your local hardware.

Besides the Notepad updates, a few more updates are coming to Paint in version 11.2512.191.0. The app benefits from a “Coloring Book” feature that uses Copilot to generate coloring book-like illustrations, and the fill tool has a tolerance slider for sharper fills and creative effects.

These changes are rolling out in Notepad version 11.2512.10.0. This build is currently limited to Windows Insiders in the Canary and Dev channels, but once the bugs are ironed out, the update should roll out to all Windows 11 PCs.