Rest in peace, WordPad

Microsoft has started getting rid of the WordPad application, which has been a staple of every Windows operating system released since 1995. The company led by Satya Nadella not only plans to remove the WordPad app from new versions of Windows 11, but also prevent its reinstallation.

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The news was first revealed by Microsoft through a blog post from Windows Insider, where the company addresses the removal of WordPad in Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26020: “Starting from this build, WordPad and People apps will no longer be installed after a clean installation of the operating system. In a future release, WordPad will be removed when updating. WordPad cannot be reinstalled. WordPad is an obsolete feature of Windows“.

However, the good news for WordPad fans is that the alternative to Microsoft Word has not yet been removed from the stable version of Windows 11, as the new changes have been implemented first in the beta and developer channels.

WordPad was the successor to Microsoft Write and initially positioned itself in two key aspects: a text editor with some Word functionalities and a more advanced version of the Notepad app. While the WordPad application will be discontinued in Windows 11, Notepad seems to be safe for now.

Although the news that Microsoft is removing WordPad from Windows 11 may come as a shock to many, the Redmond company seems to have been planning the move for some time, as a recent article from GeekWire pointed out that WordPad did not receive the dark mode that the Notepad app received.

Microsoft Word DOWNLOAD

In addition, Microsoft had classified WordPad as “obsolete” since September 2023. The company now recommends using other alternatives to WordPad, such as Word and Notepad: “We recommend Microsoft Word for rich text documents such as .doc and .rtf, and Windows Notepad for plain text documents such as .txt”.