Notepad has come a long way over the years, establishing itself as a trusted staple for Windows users. It changed little, remained simple and fast, and offered a user-friendly experience. But things changed quickly. When users began replacing Notepad and switching to alternatives, Microsoft, in the past few years, added a slew of features to Notepad to streamline the experience, with "Autocorrect" and "Spellcheck" being the most talked about introductions.

It's been over a year and a half since the two features were integrated into Notepad on Windows 11, but spellcheck is still far from perfect, at least in my experience. What was intended to be a time-saving functionality has turned out to be problematic for users who rely extensively on Notepad. I have seen it offer completely unrelated suggestions more often than any other editor out there, say Microsoft Word or Google Docs. Frankly, I am not ditching Notepad right away, but if spellcheck isn't fixed in the near future, I might start exploring Notepad alternatives.

Spellcheck shouldn't have been this bad

Especially since Microsoft took years to introduce the feature

If you have been a long-time Windows user, you would probably know that Notepad has been a part of the operating system for a long time — 42 years, to be precise. It has been available since the days of Windows 1.0. And while it was largely ignored for most of this period, the last few years saw increased activity, with more and more features being added to Notepad. So, as something that predates almost every other text editor, Notepad has a certain reputation to maintain, especially since Microsoft scrapped WordPad. But with spellcheck, it has things wrong on so many levels.

For instance, when I mistyped the word "significant" as "signifant," it couldn't suggest the correct one. Instead, it kept recommending words that made no sense contextually. In another case, "installation" when mistyped as "instaation" again resulted in incorrect suggestions, some way off the mark. I tried the same with Grammarly web, and it was able to suggest the correct spellings for each. To me, it seems like Notepad's spellcheck is more word-focused instead of trying to identify the context and figure out which word works best in that case. There are countless other such examples.

I have also observed that Notepad's spellcheck often suggests the correct spelling when only one character is missing from a word. But as soon as two characters are missing, the suggestions are simply off-target. For instance, if you incorrectly type "component" as "compoent", Notepad's spellcheck will suggest the correct spelling. But when it's mistyped as "compent", the correct spelling doesn't even make it to the list of suggestions.

Spellcheck's inaccuracy affects the workflow

Autocorrect, though, comes as a relief

As someone who uses Notepad to write short pieces of content, since it doesn't inject any code into the script, the spellcheck causes a lot of trouble. The inaccuracies slow me down, as I have to re-read entire sentences to figure out the correct word. Even for others who rely on Notepad to jot down quick notes, an inaccurate spellcheck does more harm than good. When far too many words are highlighted with red underlines, users often begin to ignore them. It becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between a spelling mistake and a false flag. Microsoft Word and Google Docs have a much better approach to it. They try to understand the context of the sentence or content piece as a whole and then highlight the mistakes, leading to fewer false flags.

Autocorrect, in my experience, does soften the blow somewhat while drafting content pieces. It auto-fixes simple spelling mistakes, like when you mistype "because" as "becuase". But that's helpful only to a certain extent, and it can't fully replace a functional spellchecker. Autocorrect comes into the picture when there's only one possible correct spelling of the word, as was the case with "because." But when there are multiple possibilities, it isn't of much help.

I know I can disable spellcheck and autocorrect in Notepad and rely on third-party tools for the job. However, when the feature is natively integrated into Notepad, my expectations are bound to be higher.

It's a step in the right direction

But Notepad's spellcheck needs some fine-tuning

When Microsoft integrated spellcheck in Notepad, it came as a relief to many of us. The feature was long overdue and one of the most requested. But we expected it to be better.

A feature that Microsoft introduced to Notepad much later than its rival editors should have been fine-tuned before release, or at least in the subsequent updates. There's no excuse for it. It's been out for 18 months. That's significant, considering how other Microsoft products, features, and releases are polished before the initial launch or soon after, if issues are reported, especially when they involve artificial intelligence. It seems that in the AI race, Microsoft has lost focus on other parts of the Windows operating system.

Microsoft should prioritize fixing Notepad's spellcheck

Notepad has been my go-to app for drafting pieces of content, taking quick notes, or even reading log files ever since I started using Windows. And while it has largely been a great app, spellcheck's inaccuracy is turning out to be a deal-breaker. I believe Microsoft should refine the feature to bring it up to the level of the native spellchecker in Google Docs or third-party options like Grammarly. It can be achieved by using the same engine as Microsoft Word.

Once spellcheck and autocorrect are refined, it will help Notepad position itself as one of the best text editors on Windows, given the fact that Notepad already integrates AI to rewrite sentences. But if that doesn't happen, Notepad risks going down the same road as WordPad. When users stop trusting a core feature, the app ultimately stops serving its purpose.