If you read this website regularly—or even if this is your first time here—it’s almost a given that you use or have used Windows Notepad at some point. It is one of the most basic text editors possible—or at least, it used to be. Microsoft has been slowly bloating it with additional features, some of dubious value, but none as questionable as the new AI-powered “Rewrite” feature.
If you want to try Rewrite in Notepad, you’ll have to sign into a Microsoft account, and that’s exactly why a bunch of people who opened Notepad today got slapped in the face with a prompt to login to said account. BobPony (@TheBobPony on Xwitter) is one such user, who succinctly expressed our feelings on the matter with his tweet:
The prompt, and the Rewrite feature, were included in the latest feature update for Windows 11. Of course, you can simply click the close button on that prompt and go on your merry way using Windows 11’s tabbed notepad as you please. There’s no actual need to sign in unless you really want to try that Rewrite feature.
Alternatively, you could do as many people in the tweet replies suggest and install Notepad++ to completely replace the Windows Notepad with a still-lightweight but much more powerful editor, especially for programmers. While you’re at it, you could hit Winaero and grab the old Windows 7 calculator app to replace the bloated abomination that ships with Windows 11. You’re welcome.
If you heard about this debacle before it came out that, no, you don’t have to sign in just to use Notepad, you may have taken it at face value with good reason, whether because Microsoft is getting more and more pushy about online account logins, or because it’s been sticking more and more features into an application that is supposed to define “just the basics.” Notepad is supposed to be simple, Microsoft; adding an AI “Rewrite” feature to it is possibly the most antithetical thing you could have done.