RIP WordPad
WordPad, the rich text editor that came with Windows 95, will soon be removed from Windows 11. Microsoft announced last year that WordPad would be removed, but now we have a specific timeline: In a support article , Microsoft says WordPad will be removed. disappeared in Windows 11 24H2. The name refers to when Windows 11 24H2 will be released – in the second half of 2024 – and it will be the first version of Windows 11 to ship without the iconic rich text editor. “WordPad will be removed from all editions of Windows starting with Windows 11, version 24H2, and Windows Server 2025,” Microsoft said in a statement. “As a result, Windows will no longer have a built-in RTF reader by default. We recommend Microsoft Word for rich text documents such as .doc and .rtf, and Notepad for plain text documents such as .txt.”
Of course, the writing has been on the wall for years. The text editor is another one of those apps whose user interface is stuck in the past and its features haven’t been updated in years. Chances are you won’t miss it in any functional sense; we’ll just share the nostalgia of memories of when we could have used it in the past.
However, Notepad still comes with Windows and will continue to do so, although Notepad is a text editor, which means you can’t make text bold, italic, underlined, or change the font size. After Windows 24H2, we will not have a rich text editor to use by default, and the best choice for a free rich text editor would be an online application such as Google Docs or Microsoft 365 Online , or a free office suite such as LibreOffice .