In May, Microsoft fixed one of Notepad’s longest running problems. Now, Notepad has been enhanced with several improvements including wrap-around find/replace, text zooming, line numbers, and overall performance.
After 33 years, Microsoft finally decided to fix one of Notepad’s longest running problems: garbled text files from other operating systems. That was two months ago, but it wasn’t the end of Microsoft’s focus on the text editor. In the latest version of the Windows 10 Insider Preview Build (17713), Notepad received a feature upgrade.
As the Windows Blog explains, Preview Build 17713 includes a number of improvements for Notepad. The first of those is the find/replace experience, which now includes the option to perform wrap-around find/replace changes. The “Find what:” field will also remember your last text entry the next time you open it, or automatically fill it with text you’ve highlighted when opening it.
Next up is text zooming. A new View > Zoom menu has been added with predefined zoom level choices, or you can use the keyboard shortcuts of CTRL + Plus, CTRL + Minus, or CTRL + Mouse Wheel to change zoom level. Pressing CTRL + 0 will reset the zoom level.
Other improvements include line and column numbers being displayed correctly when word-wrap is enabled, line and column numbers are no longer reset to one when saving a file, lines that don’t fit on the screen are now displayed correctly, pressing CTRL + Backspace deletes the previous word, arrow keys functionality has been tweaked to unselect text before moving the cursor, and work has been carried out to improve the performance of Notepad when opening large files.
Build 17713 also introduces Edge browser improvements including per-site media autoplay controls, a new dictionary function for word definitions, and a better PDF Reader experience thanks to more toolbar options and improved rendering options. Business users can now authenticate remote desktop sessions using biometrics with Windows Hello, and a shared PC can be used more quickly thanks to a new “Fast Sign-in” feature.
If you’re not a member of the Windows Insider program, then it’s just a case of waiting. These new feature will be rolled out to all Windows 10 users as part of the Redstone 5 update later this year.
