Windows 11 Notepad Finally Gets Spell Check
Microsoft has given one of its productivity apps a long-needed update to Windows 11. According to the latest reports, Microsoft is finally adding spell checking and AutoCorrect to Notepad, the operating system’s built-in text app. You’d be forgiven for wondering why spell checking is an exciting new feature in 2024, but it’s still good news.
Notepad has long been one of the popular text editors on Windows simply because of its ease of use and functionality—you can use it to create text without worrying about HTML or other formatting effects. For a long time, Notepad was neglected, which prompted some Windows users to choose Notepad2 or Notepad++. This began to change in 2018 when Microsoft added support for Mac and Unix. Since then, the app has been gradually improved by adding text zooming, circular search, line numbers, and other features. Now Microsoft is finally bringing two important additions to Notepad in the form of spell checking and AutoCorrect (both features Apple TextEdit has long offered).
For now, these features are only available to Windows Insiders.
Microsoft says it is testing new features in both the Windows 11 Canary and Dev channels. These channels are available to Windows Insiders, and it may take some time before the update to the full version of Windows 11 is rolled out.
According to the company, Notepad’s spell check will work as you’d expect: It will highlight misspelled words with red squiggly lines and offer suggestions to help you correct the mistakes.
If you’re worried that this might mess up your log and source code files, Microsoft notes that this feature will be automatically disabled for these file types, which typically results in multiple spell check errors due to the use of non-standard words.
There’s currently no timetable for when these new features will arrive in Notepad in the consumer version of Windows 11, but Windows Insiders can check them out now in the latest Canary and Developer builds.