Notepad

Notepad is a simple text editor developed by Microsoft for the Windows operating system. It provides a minimal environment for creating and editing plain text files, without support for rich text formatting, images, or other multimedia. Notepad is often used for quick notes, basic configuration files, scripts, and other lightweight text editing tasks.

Origins and scope: Notepad first appeared in the early days of Windows as a small, no-frills editor intended to replace more cumbersome editors. It has remained a standard utility across Windows versions, emphasizing speed and simplicity. It is Windows-only and runs as a standalone application in its own window.

Key features: Notepad offers basic editing commands such as cut, copy, paste, undo, and redo, along with find and replace and select all. It can open and save text files in several encodings, including ANSI, UTF-8, and UTF-16. Word wrap can be toggled, and the font can be customized through the Format menu. Notepad supports printing and can handle Windows-style CRLF line endings as well as other common endings when opening files.

Limitations and context: Notepad does not provide rich text formatting, spell checking, syntax highlighting, or multi-document tabbed editing. It is designed for speed and simplicity rather than advanced features. For more capable editing, users may choose alternatives such as Notepad++, Visual Studio Code, or other text editors.

See also: Notepad++ is a widely used successor offering more features while retaining the plain-text editing focus. Notepad remains a baseline utility bundled with Windows.