Restore Notepad double‑click selection behavior from Windows 10

Question

In Windows 10 Notepad, when I double‑clicked on text, the selection included the entire word along with dots (.) or numbers if they were part of it. For example, double‑clicking on abc.def would select the whole abc.def, and double‑clicking on 123.45 would select the entire number.

In Windows 11 Notepad, double‑clicking now stops at punctuation or numbers, so abc.def only selects abc and 123.45 only selects 123. This change makes editing text with dots or decimal numbers less efficient.

Request: Please add an option or revert the behavior so that double‑clicking selects the entire word including dots and numbers, just like in Windows 10. This would improve usability for users who frequently work with filenames, decimal numbers, or text containing punctuation.

Answer 1

Currently, the behavior of double-clicking to select text in Notepad on Windows 11 has changed compared to Windows 10. In Windows 11, double-clicking on text stops at punctuation or numbers, which means that selections like abc.def will only select abc, and 123.45 will only select 123. Unfortunately, there is no option available in the current version of Windows 11 Notepad to revert this behavior to include punctuation and numbers in the selection as it was in Windows 10.

If this feature is important for your workflow, you might consider providing feedback to Microsoft through the Windows Feedback Hub, as user feedback can influence future updates and features in Windows applications.

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References:

• Customizing the appearance of selections
• How to distinguish between clicks and double-clicks
• Reference for Windows 11 and Windows 10 settings
• DefaultOptions.SelectSubwordOnDoubleClickName Field
• DefaultOptions.SelectSubwordOnDoubleClickId Field

Answer 2

Hi Yam,

What Insider build and Channel are you on?

WIN+R, type winver for the build #.

As suggested above, please file Feedback

using WIN+F.