Windows 11 Will Soon Feature A New, Simpler Text Editor Called “Edit”

If you’re worried about Notepad’s feature creep in recent years (with Copilot involved, unsurprisingly), there’s a new app on Windows 11 will do strictly text editing and nothing else. It’s called Windows Edit, though it’s hardly an “app” by modern standards given it’s command-line-only nature.

“Edit” Coming To Windows 11

The new Windows Edit traces its roots all the way back to 1991 when MS-DOS 5.0 was launched, and one of its key feature was the MS-DOS Editor program – which happens to be colloquially referred as “edit” or “edit.com”; its function was then replaced by Notepad in Windows operating systems, itself left to the fabric of history just 4 years after its 1991 launch.

Since then, there have been several key events involving Microsoft’s various text editors. WordPad – a stripped-down version of Microsoft Word that comes pre-installed in all Windows versions until Windows 11 23H2 – was officially retired; as such, Notepad effectively took its place with feature additions like spellchecking, tabs, and Copilot writing support.

So, for those who just want a simple text editor without the fluff, Windows Edit will be your answer when it becomes the default text editor in Windows 11 with a caveat: it operates within command prompt, so this may be only for those already familiar with command line interfaces. It’s also open-sourced (and the 300KB file size limit due to 16-bit limitation is now removed), which you can download it on GitHub if you want to try it out first.

Pokdepinion: Back to basics.