Notepad finally gets spellcheck, autocorrect for all Windows 11 users

Microsoft has finally released a spell check and autocorrect feature in Notepad for all Windows 11 users, forty-one years after the program was introduced in 1983.

The new features have been tested by Windows Insiders since March but have started to roll out to all Windows 11 users over the past couple of days.

With the new update, you will now see the familiar red spell check squiggle under incorrectly spelled words. If you right-click on the word, a 'Spelling' submenu offers choices that can be used to correct the spelling.

Notepad now also includes an autocorrect feature that fixes spelling mistakes as you type them. However, this feature rarely works in our tests, with us only able to trigger it a few times in our dozens of tests where we intentionally introduced typos while typing.

Both the spell check and autocorrect features can be disabled in the Notepad settings, with users able to customize whether it's turned on for specific file types, including files with the .txt (text files), .md (markdown files), .srt/.ass (subtitle files), .lrc (lyrics files), .lic (license files) file extensions.

After years of laying unchanged, Microsoft finally started adding new features to Windows Notepad in 2018 to modernize the application and help it compete with popular Notepad replacements.

These new features include enhanced Unix & Mac compatibility, wrap-around find and replace, UTF-8 support, tabs, text zoom, autosaving, line number displays, and a character counter.