The Notepad Rebellion: How Two Coders Stripped Away AI and Built Simpler Tools

Microsoft spent years letting Notepad sit untouched. Then it added AI. Rewrite arrived for Windows Insiders in November 2024. Summarize followed in March 2025. Write came that May. The company later grouped these under Writing Tools. Each update required a Microsoft account. Each pulled in Copilot. Users who once opened a bare text editor now faced prompts, cloud logins and feature bloat.

Developers noticed. One rebuilt the app from scratch. Another went further, shrinking it to absurd extremes. Their projects, reported by MakeUseOf on August 6, 2026, and covered by XDA Developers on June 30, 2026, capture a quiet pushback against software that no longer knows when to stop.

ForLoopCodes released Legacy Notepad on GitHub. The description states the motivation plainly. Microsoft “won’t stop adding AI bloatware to notepad.exe.” The project uses C++17 and the Win32 API. It relies on RichEdit 4.1 and GDI+ for rendering. No tabs. No AI controls. No account prompts. The window looks and behaves like the classic version many remember from earlier Windows releases.

Features stay focused. Users get multi-encoding support for UTF-8, UTF-16 and ANSI. Word wrap toggles on and off. Font selection, zoom, find and replace, and a time-date stamp all work without extras. Dark mode appears under the View menu. An optional background image can tile, stretch or fit with adjustable opacity. The app pins above other windows. It prints. Icons swap through external files. Yet it deliberately skips spell check, autocorrect and auto-save. Closing a document carries finality. Changes vanish unless saved on purpose.

The GitHub repository lists 498 stars and 20 forks as of recent checks. Build instructions target Windows 7 SP1 or newer. CMake and either MinGW-w64 or Visual Studio 2022 handle compilation. The modular structure separates editor logic, file I/O, theming and background handling into distinct files. Known issues include Windows Defender flagging the 32-bit binary. Developers advise checking SHA-256 hashes.

Performance claims stand out. The README calls it 25 times faster. That speed comes from native code and minimal overhead. No telemetry. No cloud sync. Just text. The project lives openly on GitHub, licensed under MIT. It runs on Windows only. Wine or Proton use remains unverified.

Meanwhile Dave Plummer took a different route. The former Microsoft engineer who wrote the original Task Manager released TinyRetroPad. At 2.5 kilobytes it makes most applications look obese. HowToGeek tested it against five alternatives in a July 24, 2026 article and declared the tiny program the winner. “It weighs in at less than 3 kilobytes, which is absurdly small for a program in 2026,” the author wrote.

Plummer built it in assembly. The program wraps Windows RICHEDIT50W controls yet adds almost nothing else. No DLL dependencies beyond what ships with the OS. No sign-in. No Copilot. Launching it feels instant. Perfect, Plummer says, for tweaking an INI file without watching a tutorial or logging into an account. “I just want to tweak an .INI file without logging into a Microsoft account, downloading a bunch of DLLS, and watching a 12-minute YouTube tutorial on how to use the new Notepad. And I don’t really want Copilot involved at all,” he told XDA Developers.

Both projects respond to the same trend. Microsoft’s modern Notepad replaced the classic executable through app aliases. Users who type notepad.exe now load a Store-based application by default. That version supports Markdown preview, tabs and session restoration alongside the AI tools. Some administrators restore the old binary by creating symbolic links or disabling the alias in Settings under Apps > Advanced app settings. Dedoimedo explained the steps in June 2025 and called the AI additions unwarranted gimmicks after decades of neglect.

Yet restoring the original file only goes so far. The legacy binary lacks updates. It misses dark mode and modern encoding defaults. Projects like Legacy Notepad and TinyRetroPad fill that gap without inheriting Microsoft’s direction. One adds thoughtful options while keeping the spirit intact. The other strips everything possible and still edits text.

Reactions spread quickly on X. Former Microsoft staff and longtime Windows users shared the links. Some praised the return to simplicity. Others saw larger questions about development tools. If coders now reach for AI to write basic applications, what happens when they confront code that demands precision? Plummer’s hand-assembled 2.5KB editor stands as proof that deep knowledge still produces tiny, efficient results.

Legacy Notepad offers more polish for daily use. Background images and runtime language switching between English and Japanese extend its appeal. TinyRetroPad targets nostalgia and extreme minimalism. Both avoid the account requirements and cloud features that now gate basic writing in Microsoft’s version. Both run offline. Both save only when told.

The contrast reveals choices. Microsoft bets users want assistance, summarization and integration with its larger AI ecosystem. These independent developers bet some users want none of it. They want speed. They want predictability. They want the application to stay out of the way. And they want it small enough that the binary barely registers on disk.

Windows 11 still ships the classic notepad.exe in System32. Power users disable the alias or rename the new app. But for those seeking a maintained, open-source replacement that never phones home or suggests rewrites, the options have improved. Legacy Notepad already supports community contributions. TinyRetroPad proves how far one determined engineer can push size constraints.

Neither project aims to replace Notepad++ for programmers who need syntax highlighting and plugins. They target the original use case. Quick notes. Config edits. Simple text that should remain simple. In an industry racing to embed AI everywhere, these two examples remind builders that restraint can produce better tools for specific jobs.

Plummer’s work draws on decades inside Microsoft. ForLoopCodes appears driven by frustration with the current direction. Their results differ in scale and feature set yet converge on the same principle. Software does not improve simply by growing larger or adding intelligence. Sometimes it improves by shrinking. By removing. By remembering what it once did well and refusing to cross into features that complicate the core task.

Users who test these apps often report the same sensation. The window opens immediately. Text appears without delay. Menus contain only expected items. No sidebars. No suggestions. No login. The experience feels like an older Windows yet runs on current hardware with modern visual tweaks where desired. That combination explains the interest.

Microsoft has not commented directly on these projects. It continues to expand AI inside its flagship writing apps. The company positions Copilot as helpful across Word, Outlook and now Notepad. For a segment of users that help feels like interference. They prefer deliberate action over automated assistance. They accept the responsibility of saving their own work.

Legacy Notepad and TinyRetroPad give them that choice. One provides a fuller classic experience with modern conveniences. The other delivers radical minimalism. Both credit real engineering skill rather than generated code. Both remain free and open. And both demonstrate that the desire for simple tools has not disappeared even as the default applications grow more complex.

The next time a configuration file needs editing or a quick note must stay plain, these alternatives sit ready. They load fast. They stay small. They ask for nothing beyond the text. In a world flooded with AI features, that restraint feels almost radical. And for many, exactly right.