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Windows 11 is more than a year old, but that hasn’t stopped Microsoft from experimenting with new features. A Microsoft employee accidentally posted a screenshot of the Windows Notepad app with the tabs feature. The image contained a confidentiality warning which meant that there were restrictions for all employees from taking photos or screenshots. But the employee, a senior product manager at Microsoft, jubilantly tweeted the image with the caption, “Notepad in Windows 11 now has tabs!”.
It appears that Microsoft will add tabs to Notepad in Windows 11 in a future update, a software employee accidentally made public via Twitter. He will have received a big reprimand for this because the screenshot was not yet intended for the outside world. It didn’t take long for the post to be removed again, but that couldn’t stop it Central windows started the gossip.
With the introduction of tabs, you will be able to create multiple .txt files in Notepad. This lets you create multiple notebooks, which helps organize your notes. You will be able to give each of these tabs a separate name. Also, the update doesn’t make any major changes to the layout of Notepad.
It’s currently still a guess when Microsoft will make the feature official with an update. The feature may soon be available for the Windows Insider channel. Notepad would do this after File Explorer will be the next app to introduce tabs.
He soon realized his grave mistake and deleted the tweet after some time. But that was enough for publications like Windows Central and fellow Twitteratis to spot the accidental leak about the Notepad tabs feature in the coming months.
Based on the Notepad app screenshot, it looks like the feature is still being tested as there’s a warning on it saying, “Confidential Don’t discuss features or take screenshots”. Well, the Microsoft employee probably should’ve double-checked before tweeting about it, though we hope that the individual would not get into too much trouble for the leak.
As of the time of writing, Microsoft has yet to reveal when the tabs feature is coming to Notepad or whether it is coming at all. One thing’s for sure though, the feature is definitely in the works as per the leaked screenshot.
Well, Microsoft already offers the tabs feature in the File Explorer app. Windows has finally embraced this trivial yet helpful design, allowing you to access different folder locations without opening a dedicated explorer window for every location. But the tabbed interfaces aren’t anything new. Even if you consider the Notepad app, the tabbed interface isn’t very new. Programmers familiar with SublimeText have had a multi-tab interface for years.
But having such a feature can save precious time in searching text files and then opening them in separate Notepad instances. Moreover, you don’t have to switch to different files by using Alt + Tab shortcut because the second text file is just a “tap” away.
Since it was only a screenshot, there are no details about the arrival of such a feature in the Notepad app. Even if it makes it to the final update push, don’t expect the feature any sooner. It took Microsoft a whole year to launch the File explorer tabs feature.
Microsoft usually announces upcoming features on its official blog, but its employee spilled the beans on Twitter. While this might seem like an accident, it could also be a hype-ploy by Microsoft to tease the upcoming feature to the audience. If you are in the Windows Insider program, you may have early access to the “Notepad tabs” feature in the future.
In any case, if Microsoft does add the tabs feature to its new version, it will be one of a kind built-in tool to have an interface with tabs, proceeding with the tabs feature of File Explorer this year.
Microsoft has already tried the tabs feature for almost all apps in Windows 10 calling it sets. Although Microsoft discontinued this feature in File Explorer and Notepad and never released it in previous Windows.
The addition of the Tabs feature in Notepad might mean that other Microsoft built-in apps also get this feature soon. Even if Microsoft did not add a tabs feature in Windows 10 but still, some power users had the feature using third-party tools even now.
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