Microsoft is introducing text formatting in its Windows Notepad app. This notable update to Notepad is accessible to Canary and Dev Channel testers on Windows 11, incorporating bold and italic styles, hyperlinks, and even Markdown support.

With the integration of text formatting in Notepad, a formatting toolbar is now present at the top of the app, alongside the existing File, Edit, and View options. This toolbar provides access to bold, italic, and hyperlink functions, as well as support for lists and headings.

“The experience supports Markdown style input and files for users who prefer to work directly with the lightweight markup language,” says Dave Grochocki, the principal product manager lead for Microsoft’s Windows inbox apps. “You can switch between formatted Markdown and Markdown syntax views in the view menu or by selecting the toggle button in the status bar at the bottom of the window.”

Since Notepad is usually used with plain text, you can also easily clear all formatting from the formatting toolbar or from the edit menu in the app. If you’re not a fan of the lightweight formatting options, you can also fully disable this new support in the Notepad app settings.

This formatting addition to Notepad comes just a week after Microsoft started testing a new feature in the app that can generate text for you using AI. The new Write feature in Notepad can be used to “quickly draft text based on your prompt,” and alongside these formatting options Notepad is starting to look a lot more like Microsoft Word.

Like I wrote in my Notepad newsletter earlier this week, it’s amazing that Microsoft barely touched Notepad for decades, and now it’s gone from basic log file reader to writing messages itself. A lot of Notepad’s new features have arrived since Microsoft decided to remove WordPad from Windows, after nearly 30 years.