After File Explorer, now even the humble Notepad gets tab support

Valid only for Windows 11 users, the Notepad application will be able to open a virtually unlimited number of documents in individual tabs, without burdening RAM with separate instances of the application opened in individual windows.

The change occurs first in version 11.2212.33.0 of the Notepad app, available for testing with the latest Windows 11 build distributed to users enrolled in the Dev Channel program.

With support for multiple tabs, Notepad will be an even more convenient text editor to use than the Microsoft Word suite, with users able to create, edit, and organize multiple text documents simultaneously using the same application window. Of course, other facilities such as advanced formatting and text correction options remain absent from the application, which should remain a relatively basic text editor. In addition, at least for drag-and-drop commands, users will be able to choose between opening the document in a new tab, or a separate window. For example, the latter option could be particularly useful in situations where you need to compare the contents of similar documents, possibly using copy/paste operations to make various changes.

The new version of Notepad will also have keyboard shortcuts for managing tabs, the selection available will be detailed in the application documentation. For example, there will be separate commands for creating a new document in a new tab or separate window.

At the moment, the test version of Notepad with tab support seems to have problems even with newly added shortcuts, which would conflict with other existing Windows shortcuts.