Notepad gets extended line endings support in Windows 10

Notepad is the default plain text editor on all supported versions of Microsoft's Windows operating system. The editor is popular because of its integration with Windows and its fast loading performance; it has serious disadvantages as well, however.

Notepad can't be used to open larger text files and the text editor did not display text files created on Unix, Linux or Mac OS X machines correctly.

Notepad displayed the text continuously which meant that it appeared garbled in the editor as it was displayed without any line breaks.

The screenshot below shows how such a text file looks like in current versions of the Notepad program on Windows.

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While you can edit the document using Notepad, most users that I know switched to third-party software like Notepad++, Text Editor Pro, or Atom 1.0 editor instead.

Third-party tools offer support additional features such as code syntax highlighting, advanced text search and replacement operations, tabbed browsing support and numerous other features that Notepad does not support.

Microsoft announced at the Build 2018 Developer conference that an upcoming version of Notepad will get extended line endings support to support plain text files created on Unix, Linux and Mac OS X devices.

The following screenshot shows the text document that you saw on the screenshot above loaded in the updated version of Notepad.

As you can see right away, line breaks are now displayed as they should be in Notepad. The updated version of Notepad is available already for Windows Insiders who run the latest development release.

If things go as planned, Microsoft will release the update in the coming feature update for Windows 10, Windows version 1809, which it plans to release later this year.

Windows admins and users who don't want the new functionality can modify the following Registry keys to change Notepad's behavior when pasting and displaying text.

1. Tap on the Windows-key, type regedit.exe and hit the Enter-key on the keyboard.
2. Confirm the UAC prompt.
3. Navigate to the following key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Notepad

fPasteOriginalEOL

default value: 0

• 0 -- modifies the EOL character of the text being pasted into Notepad to the EOL character of the currently open document.
• 1 -- EOL characters in text pasted into Notepad are not modified.

fWindowsOnlyEOL

default value: 0

• 0 -- insert the currently open document's detected EOL character when Return/Enter key is hit.
• 1 -- Force Windows CRLF line endings when Return/Enter key is hit.

Closing Words

Notepad will only be updated on Windows 10 to get extended support for end of line characters and the feature will land only in new feature update versions of Windows 10 as it stands right now.

It is a useful feature for those who use Notepad on the device; nothing changes for users who use a different plain text editor.