Windows 10 Notepad To Get Faster Updates via the Microsoft Store

Microsoft is moving the distribution of their iconic Windows 10 Notepad application to the Microsoft Store in order to facilitate faster and more frequent updates.

Since the Notepad was introduced, not much was changed over the years. Then in May 2018, Microsoft announced that they were adding the much needed support for Unix & Mac EOL characters.

Since then, we have seen a constant stream of new modern features such as wrap around search, text zoom, search autofill, line numbers when using word wrap. search with Bing, and better UTF-8 support.

While the Notepad team is hard at work making Notepad a more modern product, they have had to rely on pushing out new updates at the same time that Windows 10 updates were released.

Relying on the Windows update cycle, though, makes it harder for them to diagnose bugs, quickly fix them, and release new updates at a faster speed.

Moving Notepad to the Microsoft Store for faster updates

This is about to change as Microsoft just announced in the Windows 10 Insider Build 18963 release notes that the Windows 10 Notepad will now be distributed through the Microsoft Store. This gets Notepad outside of the Windows 10 release cycle and allows the developers to push out new updates and fixes as fast as they want.

"Notepad has been a well-loved text editor in Windows for over 30 years. Over the last few releases, we’ve been making a number of small improvements to Notepad based on your feedback (including expanded line ending support, wrap around search, and indicating when there’s unsaved content.) Starting with this build, we’re making a change so that future Notepad updates will be automatically available via the store. This will allow us the flexibility to respond to issues and feedback outside the bounds of Windows releases. As always, if you have any feedback for Notepad, we welcome it in the Feedback Hub under Apps > Notepad."

This is first being tested with Windows Insiders, though, so users will not see this change happen until the next major feature update