A dark theme for Notepad would be a Godsend

Aug 2, 2018 12:08 GMT  ·  By

After so many years of completely ignoring Notepad, Microsoft has finally started working on a handful of improvements, all of them supposed to give this little yet extremely popular app a modern touch.

Believe it or not, but Notepad is currently one of the most widely-used applications in Windows, regardless of whether we’re talking about Windows 7, Windows 8.1, or Windows 10. Notepad has millions of fans across the world, and it’s being used for a wide variety of purposes, such as editing simple text documents to coding.

The first news in this regard landed at the Build developer conference in May when Microsoft announced that Notepad would be getting Linux line ending support, an improvement that the massive group of developers attending the event received with excitement.

A few months later, Microsoft announced a new series of updates for Notepad that would become available to users with the release of Windows 10 Redstone 5 in the fall.

Notepad in Windows 10 April 2018 Update

Notepad is getting support for searching on Bing right from within its interface, and it’s enough to simply select a certain phrase to start a search. Furthermore, there are zooming improvements, as well as refinements to the search and replace experience in Notepad.

All in all, Notepad is evolving, and this can only be good news, not only for developers, but for the entire Windows community. But the Notepad overhaul shouldn’t stop here, and one of the improvements that the app should get is a dark theme.

Earlier this week, a friend of mine, who’s also a heavy Notepad user, told me that the only thing he needs to work with this app day and night is a dark theme that would substantially improve the way you use it during the night. Microsoft has already introduced a blue light filter in Windows 10, but a dark Notepad would make everything so much better for developers.

While I do agree that Notepad needs a dark theme, I decided to search the web and see how many people think the same. And as it turns out, there are lots of Windows 10 users who’d like to see a dark theme in Notepad, and this Feedback Hub post shows just how important this feature would be for all of them.

Notepad in Windows 10 April 2018 Update

A dark theme for Notepad wouldn’t make sense only for users, but also when taking into account the entirely new direction that Windows 10 has embraced. The operating system itself is getting a dark theme, and Microsoft is hard at work to make such a visual style available in other apps as well, including in File Explorer. Just like Notepad, File Explorer is an incredibly popular Windows tool, and by the looks of things, there’s a good chance that Windows 10 Redstone 5 does bring a dark theme for the file manager.

If Windows 10 as a whole steps towards a dark theme, Notepad must clearly be part of the overhaul, especially because the most recent improvements have brought some users back, increasing the overall number of fans this app has.

Unfortunately, there’s no chance to see a dark theme being part of the Redstone 5 feature lineup, as work in this regard hasn’t even started. On the other hand, if we make ourselves heard, especially by voting in the Feedback Hub on the link mentioned above, we may see the Notepad going dark, literally, in the Redstone 6 update.

Windows 10 Redstone 6 is projected to see daylight in the spring of 2019, so we still have enough time to show Microsoft how important a dark theme for Notepad really is. Head over to the Feedback Hub and cast your vote right now!

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Notepad in Windows 10 April 2018 Update
Notepad in Windows 10 April 2018 UpdateNotepad in Windows 10 April 2018 Update
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