Dave Plummer, a former Microsoft engineer and creator of the original Windows Task Manager, has released TinyRetroPad, a 2.5KB text editor that deliberately rejects the modern Notepad’s expanding feature set. Announced in early July 2026, the editor strips back an iconic Windows utility to its Windows XP-era simplicity: no tabs, no AI writing assistance, no telemetry, and a window that draws itself almost instantly. For the growing number of users who feel Notepad has lost its way, TinyRetroPad lands as both a functional tool and a pointed critique.
What TinyRetroPad Actually Is—and Isn’t
TinyRetroPad is not a full reimplementation of a text engine. It’s a lightweight wrapper around the RICHEDIT50W control—a rich-text editing component already built into Windows. By leaning on system DLLs instead of bundling a modern framework, Plummer was able to squeeze the executable down to roughly 2,500 bytes. The program opens a classic window with a menu bar offering File, Edit, and Help; it supports basic text entry, cut/copy/paste, and standard keyboard shortcuts. There is no spell check, no cloud connectivity, and no session restore. It’s the Notepad you might remember from Windows XP, delivered in a package smaller than a typical screenshot.
But don’t mistake TinyRetroPad for a daily driver for everyone. It lacks Unicode support beyond what the RichEdit control provides, offers no dark mode, and won’t understand Markdown or line-ending normalization in the way the modern Notepad does. It’s not a replacement for Notepad++ or a code editor. Its appeal is ideological and practical for a specific audience: users who want the absolute minimum over their text—fast, predictable, and silent. For sysadmins quickly editing a config file, or anyone who prizes launch speed over features, it’s a compelling option.
How Notepad Turned Into a Strategy Container
The Notepad you’ll find on a freshly installed Windows 11 machine in mid-2026 is a very different creature from the one that shipped with Windows 95. Microsoft has, over the last several feature updates, layered in capabilities that extend the app far beyond plain text: tabs, autosave, multi-level undo, spell check, improved search, Markdown rendering, and—most controversially—AI-powered rewrite and summarization features. Many of these changes arrived after the removal of WordPad from Windows 11 version 24H2, a move that left a functional gap between barebones plain-text editing (traditional Notepad) and full word processing (Microsoft Word). Instead of reviving WordPad or creating a new middle-ground app, Microsoft opted to stretch Notepad upward.
The problem isn’t any single feature. Tabs can genuinely help users manage multiple scratch files. Autosave prevents accidental data loss. AI writing tools, as Microsoft has confirmed, will soon run on-device using local NPU acceleration on Copilot+ PCs—no subscription required. Each addition, viewed in isolation, is defensible. But the cumulative effect has been to transform a tool that earned trust by being “dumb” into one that increasingly behaves like a platform. Notepad now has a product roadmap, a version history in the Microsoft Store, and telemetry pipelines that feed back to Microsoft’s servers. For users who relied on Notepad as an always-present, zero-surprise utility, the shift feels like a betrayal of its original contract.
Who TinyRetroPad Is For—and Who Should Stick With Modern Notepad
Home users
If you use Notepad to jot down shopping lists, paste quotes, or quickly strip formatting from copied text, TinyRetroPad will feel instantly familiar. It opens in a blink, never prompts you to sign in, and won’t unexpectedly suggest rewriting your sentence. However, you’ll lose conveniences like autosave recovery and spell check. If you’ve grown accustomed to having multiple tabs open, TinyRetroPad’s single-document-per-window model will feel archaic. For many, the modern Notepad remains a perfectly adequate daily scratchpad—especially if you’ve already tuned its settings to disable AI nudges.
Power users and sysadmins
This is where TinyRetroPad shines. Editing a configuration file, examining a log, or pasting a registry snippet demands speed and trust. You want an editor that doesn’t reinterpret line endings, doesn’t add metadata, and doesn’t phone home. TinyRetroPad’s absence of network connectivity and telemetry makes it a safer choice for sensitive or regulated environments. However, be aware that it’s a third-party executable you’ll need to deploy yourself; in tightly managed enterprise settings, its lack of digital signing and formal support may be a non-starter.
Developers
If you need syntax highlighting, regex search, or workspace management, TinyRetroPad is the wrong tool. Modern Notepad—while still no IDE—has gained small developer-friendly features like auto-indent detection and better handling of mixed line endings. VS Code, Notepad++, or Sublime Text remain far better options for coding. TinyRetroPad is for those moments when you need nothing more than a blank window and a blinking cursor, and you want them immediately.
The WordPad Gap and Microsoft’s Missed Opportunity
WordPad’s deprecation and removal was the inflection point. For decades, users had a three-tier text editing landscape: Notepad for plain text, WordPad for light rich-text work, and Word for heavy-duty documents. Microsoft’s advice was to use Notepad for plain text and Word for rich text, but that ignored the millions who used WordPad precisely because they didn’t want or need Word. When WordPad vanished, pressure mounted on Notepad to fill the vacuum. The addition of Markdown preview and improved formatting capabilities makes more sense in this light: Microsoft is trying to give the default Windows install a capable lightweight writing surface. But doing so under the Notepad brand has blurred the line between a neutral plain-text editor and a mini writing environment, eroding the very quality that made Notepad indispensable.
Microsoft could have chosen a different path: ship a separate “Windows Notes” app, revive a modern WordPad, or offer a classic mode toggle inside Notepad. The fact that it didn’t suggests that the strategic priority is reducing the number of inbox applications while maximizing the surface area for Copilot and Microsoft 365 integration. Notepad, because it’s already on every Windows PC and opened by millions daily, became the obvious beachhead.
What to Do If You’re Fed Up With Modern Notepad
Try TinyRetroPad
You can download TinyRetroPad from Dave Plummer’s official GitHub release page. The executable is self-contained and requires no installation—just run it. But note: Windows SmartScreen may flag an unsigned, minimally known binary. You’ll need to manually allow it to run. If you’re comfortable with that, it’s a remarkably fast and clean experience.
Tame Modern Notepad
If you’d rather not switch but want to cut the clutter, you can prune some of modern Notepad’s excesses:
- Disable AI features: Go to Notepad’s gear icon (Settings) and turn off “Show writing suggestions” or any Copilot-linked toggle. On some builds, you may need to dig into Windows’ privacy settings to disable online AI processing for inbox apps.
- Strip out session restore: In Settings, toggle “When Notepad starts” to “Open a new window” instead of resuming previous sessions.
- Avoid tabs: You can ignore tabs or close extra ones; there’s no setting to revert to single-document mode permanently, but you can use Ctrl+W to close tabs and never invoke tabbing behavior.
- Block telemetry at the system level: Use the Diagnostic Data Viewer and set telemetry to “Required diagnostic data” (the most restricted level). This won’t eliminate all telemetry from Notepad specifically, but it minimizes it.
Consider Other Alternatives
There’s a spectrum of third-party editors that respect minimalism without being as barebones as TinyRetroPad:
- Notepad2 or Notepad2-mod: Small, fast, with syntax highlighting but no cloud features.
- Metapad: An even older-school alternative that focuses on speed and simplicity.
- AkelPad: A plain-text editor with plugins, but no telemetry or AI.
- Standard Notepad from an older Windows build: You can extract the classic notepad.exe from a Windows 7 or 8.1 ISO and side-load it—but this gets technically messy and may break on modern systems.
The Bigger Picture: When Small Tools Become Big Fights
TinyRetroPad’s 2.5KB file size is not an engineering fair fight against a Store-updated Win32 app with accessibility hooks, localization, and security hardening. But that number is a symbol. It compresses a broad complaint—that Windows utilities are being turned into data collection and AI delivery vehicles—into a number anyone can understand. The same way that a 3MB PDF reader seems heavier than necessary, a multi-megabyte Notepad that includes cloud endpoints and AI model prompts feels disproportionate to its purpose.
Microsoft’s inbox apps are increasingly carrying the weight of corporate strategy: Start menu recommendations, Edge nag screens, OneDrive backup prompts, and now AI rewriting inside Notepad. For most everyday users, these additions are annoyances rather than dealbreakers. But for a vocal minority—power users, IT professionals, and enthusiasts—they represent a pattern of erosion. TinyRetroPad is a vote for an alternate vision of Windows: one where the operating system provides fast, predictable, and neutral tools that don’t try to be anything more.
Outlook
Microsoft is unlikely to reverse course on Notepad’s modernization. However, the reaction to TinyRetroPad—and the broader community sentiment it channels—may push the company to offer a “classic mode” or better enterprise policy controls over AI features. With Windows 11’s feature cadence slowing and more focus on quality-of-life improvements, there’s an opening for Microsoft to acknowledge that not every tool needs to be a platform. Until then, TinyRetroPad stands as a tiny but loud reminder that sometimes, less really is more.