Not even poor Notepad is safe from Microsoft's AI obsession

You know what's free (as in beer and speech) and not being enshittified? Notepad++

I know it's dumb but I was always a bit disappointed that Microsoft overhauled Paint in Windows 11 with layers and polish. To me, paint is always that terrible pre-packaged program that makes bad art. There was a community around making things in paint, which was noticeably impressive because making decent art in paint is a nightmare.

Now that it's actually fairly good... I don't know, it's lost its charm.

Notepad++, GET YOUR FOSS ON PEOPLE!

https://notepad-plus-plus.org/

If you're not using it, then you're going to be extremely happy when you switch!

I always thought that my local use of a plain text editor should use a lot of CPU power (and electricity) in a huge data center.

Does anyone use notepad for anything other than looking at config files? I mean, does anyone write documents with notepad?

Edit: Thanks for all the comments. I have used notepad similarly, but doesn't sound like anything that needs AI.

Fuck Notepad. All my homies use Kate.

Personally, I'm boycotting Microsoft until they bring back Clippy.

Bring back clippy. "I see you want a barebones, simple text editor. Let me ruin that for you."

Been a Windows user for a really long time. A few times I tried to switch over to Linux, but it just wasn't doable for a myriad of reasons. Windows 11, I have words with it. Many bad ones, but thankfully there are many users like me that for one reason or another did not switch and put time in to beat the badness out of it via mods.

Windows 12... I'm not so sure if I'll even "upgrade" to it. It really depends on how much Microsoft decides to wire up the OS to their servers. Look, I wouldn't mind at all if I could have "smart" tools with AI assistance, but the problem for me is the lack of choice. Currently, if you don't use their crap software, what mostly travels over the wire is telemetry, and if you go offline no harm done. But make no mistake, useful AI models are too fat to run on most computers. Heck I built mine with AI in mind, but will Microsoft even give me the choice of using my own AIs? (Here's a hint, it starts with N, has a V and ends with an R)

But what if the OS starts requiring it to be online only because of their AI features? Maybe we'll have to start paying for Windows again in subscriptions to pay for the obligatory AI? Or what about scrubbing options away from the settings so you can't "misuse" your own device and have to ask nicely to their AI to do it for you?

There is a road here, and I do not like it. Thank goodness Linux is better than it has ever been.

PS: As for the notepad thing, I'm completely in agreement that it should remain without AI. Such a simple tool for scribbling down notes should be kept lean, simple and fast. Things that Microsoft and their engineers have long forgotten how to do.

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Microsoft is not a creative company!

LEAVE NOTEPAD ALONE!

seriously though. I can't imagine anything I'd rather have be more basic than notepad. It's entire literal existence is to open, edit and save basic text files. There's zero need for additional features or updates.

I mean, I don't even see their precious AI in office yet, and they're getting hard over adding it to fucking notepad? I expected an AI powered clippy to return to office before this shit.

Throws table

Imma keep using Wordpad

I don't use Windows since 2018 but.....

Now do paint. Or even more useless: calculator.

No need to "fix" notepad. It does what it has to. If you're a power user, you can download something else. But I'll bet it won't have Ai in it.

(Psst: get as far away from microsoft as you can, and don’t look back!)

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The feature is not immediately accessible in any current Windows Insider build, however, enterprising users have ways and means to delve into the operating system and haul out experiments that are not yet ready to see the light of day.

A pop-up menu titled "Cowriter" is visible, with options to tweak the format and content of the text.

Microsoft has been hard at work ruining updating Notepad in recent years.

Its GUI was updated with the introduction of Dark Mode, and tab support turned up in 2023.

Something else could have been added to Notepad instead of AI but hey gotta ride the hype train."

AI in Notepad, as shown in the screenshots, does not seem to make much sense – we're sure the wise Register readership could think of something more appropriate for the editor.

The original article contains 364 words, the summary contains 136 words. Saved 63%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

God damn. Fuck these guys. My bread and butter has been programming in the Microsoft ecosystem for 15 years. Now I'm running Linux on two different PCs and working on learning non-MS development stacks.

Not seeing anyone recommend Sublime Text here. It's free for non commercial use and is fucking kickass and doesn't look like it came out of the 80's like NP++

Is there a LibreOffice alternative?

Notepads gang, rise up!

I want my notepad to open in split second so I can jot down my thoughts when I'm in a rush so I don't forget things. or so I can copy multiple things, edit them slightly and paste them where I want them to be. or so I can pre-write a paragraph to send shortly without appearing as "this user is typing" to everyone as I rewrite a sentence for the 5th time, and to not fear accidentally hitting enter mid said paragraph.

I do not need my notepad to have AI. It's not broken, stop trying to fix things that aren't broken

Why not?

I don't understand all the negativity. An integrated AI assistant in a text editor sounds like it could be amazing.