Getting the old version of Notepad on Windows 11

Question

Hello,

I am a blind user who frequently uses the Notepad application. On my Windows 11 laptop, I’m having difficulty to read the content and Braille. I can hear it with my screen reader, but I can’t read it properly. So, when I want to write code properly, I use my Windows 10 PC. Is there a way to have the old version of Notepad? If not, is there any alternative?

Regards,

Olivier

Answer 1

This is tested and working, no uninstallation necessary.

Open Settings > Apps

In the center pane select Advanced app settings > App execution aliases

Toggle off Notepad

Then go to the old Notepad at C:\Windows\Notepad.exe and right click > Pin to the taskbar/Pin to start/Send to Desktop

Launch the old Notepad from the shortcut you just created

Answer 2

not working for me and I find no other wait to have the old windows 10 notepad.

Not sure what you tried. But check out this article.

How to Restore Old Classic Notepad in Windows 11

https://www.winhelponline.com/blog/restore-old-classic-notepad-windows/

Answer 3

not working for me and I find no other wait to have the old windows 10 notepad.

Answer 4

Hello,

Removing the alias as explained works, but not completely.

It perfectly works when running C:\windows\notepad.exe directly, or when typing "notepad" in the run dialog (Win+R). Thank you very much for that.

However, when double-clicking a .txt file, it still opens the UWP notepad.

Trying to re-associate .txt files with notepad.exe by the standard way keep re-associating .txt files with UWP notepad, no matter how you proceed.

1. Open context menu of any .txt file
2. Chose "Open with..."
3. Click on "Browse on my PC"
4. Explicitly enter "C:\windows\notepad.exe" in the open dialog
5. Click "Always"

So the workaround to really open .txt files in the classic notepad by double-clicking on them as it has always been working for ages, is as follows.

Create a new file C:\windows\classic-notepad.bat with the following contents:

@echo off
start C:\windows\notepad.exe %*

Then, make the re-association by entering "C:\windows\classic-notepad.bat" instead of "C:\windows\notepad.exe" at step 4.

Hurra, now it works! You can double-click on .txt files and they open in old classic notepad.

That's just a shame that Microsoft replaced our old good legendary notepad with a maybe slightly more beautiful, but a lot more buggy and slower one, without giving a choice.

Note that, uninstalling system notepad as said by other posts in this thread completely delete C:\windows\notepad.exe, and so it isn't a solution, unless you want to systematically use notepad++ or another text editor, other editors which don't always work very well with screen readers, or at least not as well as our good old notepad.

Just in case, before finding the solution, I also tried to copy C:\windows\notepad.exe from an older PC running an up to date version of windows 10. It was totally impossible to run it under windows 11, the window don't appear at all! Even if you rename it notepad2.exe, wherever you try, even if you try with command-line, even by specifying a file to open which does or doesn't exists, nothing!

Thank you for reading. With the hope that this definitely solves the problem for you, too.

Answer 5

After disabling the app extension alias, to make the file extensions work as well, remove the "NoOpenWith" empty string from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes\Applications\notepad.exe (this is for windows 11 and works right away. Afterwards, right click and do open with and you can see the old notepad in the list, and may make it the default app for any file extension of your choice)