Microsoft has finally announced the end of the road for WordPad, a Windows staple since 1995

In the sad news of the day, Microsoft has announced the termination of the WordPad app, a long-standing feature of Windows since its debut in Windows 95 (almost 30 years ago). Despite not receiving significant updates since Windows 8, WordPad remained a built-in feature in Windows 11

WordPad served as a free, lightweight alternative to Microsoft Word for many years, intended for rich-text editing. The app underwent several redesigns, including the adoption of the Ribbon UI in Windows 7. However, it has remained largely unchanged since its last major update with Windows 8, so we could say that its discontinuation due to lack of updates happened quite some time ago, but today it becomes official.

Microsoft suggests users switch to Microsoft Word for .doc and .rtf rich text documents, and Windows Windows Notepad for .txt plain text documents following WordPad's discontinuation (this last one received a minor update this week). Of course, you might be wondering what other alternatives apart from Microsoft's ones are out there, and at AlternativeTo, we've got you covered with an extensive list of options on the WordPad app page. Among them, you can find classics like LibreOffice - Writer or WPS Writer (though much more complex and larger than WordPad), TextMaker, or the more modern Calmly Writer

Microsoft expects WordPad's removal to happen with the next major Windows release, projected for 2024, marking an end to nearly three decades of WordPad's existence.