One of the decades-old Windows apps that received renewed attention from Microsoft during the Windows 11 era is Notepad, the default built-in text editor that in early 2021 was pretty much the same as it was in the '90s and 2000s. Since then, it's had a slew of received updates including a visual redesign, spell check and autocorrect, and window tabs.
Given Microsoft's ongoing obsession with all things AI, it's perhaps unsurprising that the latest update to the app (currently in preview for Canary and Dev Windows Insiders) is a generative AI feature called Rewrite that promises to reduce the length , tone and phrasing of highlighted sentences. or paragraphs using generative AI. Users are presented with three rewritten options based on what they've highlighted, and they can select the one they like most or tell the app to try again.
Rewrite appears to be based on the same technology as Copilot Assistant, as it uses cloud-side processing (instead of your local CPU, GPU, or NPU) and requires signing into a Microsoft account to work. The first preview is available to users in the US, France, UK, Canada, Italy and Germany.
If you don't care about AI or don't sign in with a Microsoft account, keep in mind that Microsoft is also promising substantial improvements in boot time with this version of Notepad. “Most users will see app launch times improve by more than 35 percent, while some users will see improvements of 55 percent or more,” reads the blog post from Microsoft's Windows apps manager Dave Grochocki.
