Notepad- -, An Old Microsoft Engineer Brings Back Simplicity With TinyRetroPad

Former Microsoft engineer Dave Plummer Fixes Notepad

The name Dave Plummer might ring a bell, when with Microsoft he was one of the main designers of Task Manager and now runs the YouTube channel, Dave’s Garage.   His latest project has been fixing Notepad, which has become bloated and even more full of questionable features that WordPad.  In his day Notepad was as simple as it could get and that’s how it should have remained, we had WordPad to use as a free text editor with spell check and other features.  He rebuilt the classic editor and released it as  TinyRetroPad, which is a  fork of Dave’s Tiny Editor (DTE) by Matt Power.  Grab it if you want to return to the days of simplicity.

Speaking of simplicity, Microsoft figured out why Copilot disappeared from Outlook.  For some unknown reason they are treating it’s lack as a bug instead of an improvement and are now pushing a fix to reinfect your email with AI.  The latest Office 359 Update, dated June 29, 2026, will restore those buttons, so you might want to hold off on installing that update if you have been enjoying a cleaner email experience.