Win9x Notepad in particular can only load files up to 64KB in size (edit: and supports only ANSI encoding, no Unicode). There were some actually useful additions to it up until Windows 10 or so - for example being able to handle LF (in addition to CRLF) line endings. But yeah, everything added in Windows 11 is just pure bloat.

I extracted out notepad.exe, calc.exe and mspaint.exe from Windows 7. I use them on Windows 11. They work perfectly.

> (though the "about notepad" dialog shows the windows 11 version for some reason??)

It's because the program just calls a Windows API to display the version dialog of Windows itself.

How do you edit notes using Microsoft Copilot 365 for Notepad Copilot using that version?

you can also just uninstall the "new" notepad, at which point Windows will let you run the old one again (which is still shipped!).

By using a version that is _that_ old you do lose out on some of the actually useful updates legacy nodepad received, such as LF line ending support.

If you go that far, metapad (from 98) is still better than notepad ever was. Also loads 100k lines files quickly.

Apparently windows 11 still ships with classic notepad?

https://github.com/christian-korneck/classic-windows-notepad

I feel vindicated by reverting to the old windows 10 notepad.exe

> What more does notepad need?

Most of the features that were added in later versions: unicode, tabs, auto-reload, support for large files. CTRL+S is also nice.

> What more does notepad need?

AI! It needs AI. Did I guess it right?

Get notepad.exe from reactos' nightly ISO, it's in reactos.cab

Extract both the ISO and reactos.cab wth 7zip.

It needs far more features apparently. Tons more. That's why Notepad++ is popular. Which also had a severe security vulnerability recently. Which was actively exploited by some state actor like China.

Support for Unix line endings at the very least.