Thankfully, you can still re-enable the old version of Notepad by opening the Settings App (press Windows+i) and navigating to Apps > Advanced App Settings > App Execution Aliases ...

Microsoft keeps improving and adding more features to the Windows 11 Notepad application, the latest being a built-in character counter.

Life is short and since I use Notepad myriad times daily, I’ve surrendered almost 4 Earth Days to “Bill” double-clicking Notepad’s header bar to maximize each time I launch it. — William R.

Microsoft has added bold, italic, and Markdown support to Notepad for Windows 11, updating the famously simple text editor with formatting tools.