Text Formatting Comes to Notepad

Microsoft has rolled out an update for Notepad, finally adding support for text formatting. The company announced the upgrade in an official blog post.

Notepad now fully supports Markdown — meaning users can add headers, bold and italic text, and create bullet or numbered lists. These formatting options bring the simple editor closer to the capabilities of Microsoft Word.

Markdown also allows users to insert quotes, code blocks, images, and hyperlinks. At any time, users can switch back to plain text mode if needed.

The update is currently available to Windows 11 testers on Canary and Dev channels, with a broader release planned.

This isn’t Notepad’s first big leap forward — Microsoft previously added AI editing tools that let users summarize, rewrite, or expand text directly in the app.