No, Notepad for Windows 11 doesn't require you to use a Microsoft account — unless you're trying to use AI

For the past few days on Twitter, a particularly alarming screenshot has spread of a forced Microsoft account sign-in screen appearing on Windows 11— this screenshot, originally posted by @TheBobPony, was captioned with "Sign in with a Microsoft Account for Notepad!?," showing a quite understandable amount of distaste for this needless new bloat on Notepad.

But it turns out that, while this screenshot is indeed real, those eagle-eyed enough should already be able to tell that something isn't quite lining up here. In fact, nearly any Windows 11 user could open up the fully updated Notepad without getting this pop-up at all, even if they aren't already signed into a Microsoft account. So, what's the deal here?

The key is in the exact wording, identifiable within the first sentence: "Sign in with your Microsoft account to use Rewrite and its features in Notepad." This is a prompt that exists, yes, but one that's exclusive to Copilot+ PCs and explicitly requires the user to trigger it by clicking the Rewrite button, as confirmed by our own testing.

So, despite many valid arguments against Microsoft's generative AI push in Windows and Microsoft needlessly bloating its operating systems, the controversy in this particular case seems overblown. While a misclick may have perhaps prompted this pop-up and subsequent misunderstanding, it does just seem like an innocuous issue blown out of proportion. Of course, features reliant on generative AI are going to expect you to be signed into an account that can be charged (or at least logged) for using those features, even if you've inexplicably decided that your word processing in Notepad of all places is in need of AI-driven rewrites.

So, for those who caught wind of this and were worried, relax:The barebones Notepad functionality you know and love hasn't gone anywhere and you are, in fact, still in control of the buttons you press.

While the addition of AI features to what's supposed to be a lightweight, barebones text editor is still kind of annoying for several reasons, it isn't actually being forced on any end users— and I'd even go as far as to argue that if you're using a Windows 11 PC at all, particularly the Copilot+ PCs this feature is limited to, the minimal overhead incurred by supporting AI features you aren't using probably isn't your biggest performance concern.

Still, if you want to forego even the chance of dealing with whatever Microsoft decides to shove into its basic text editor next, Notepad++ has long been an excellent alternative.