As promised, Microsoft is now beginning its effort to reduce and eliminate the Copilot branding throughout windows 11with the latest Notepad update for Insiders completely removing the Copilot icon and phrase. Now, the AI The menu is simply called “writing tools” and maintains the same functionality as before.
Additionally, Microsoft also removed references to AI in the Settings area of Notepad. Now, the ability to turn these AI-powered writing tools on or off is now included under “Advanced Features.”
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For Notepad, it seems that Microsoft has chosen to replace the Copilot menu with something more generic. Functionally it remains the same, but it no longer relies on the tainted Copilot brand. Of course, you can still easily disable all AI features in Notepad if you don’t want them.
This movement is part of Microsoft’s biggest effort to address weaknesses in Windows 11and the company is actively working on quality of life improvements designed to reduce bloat and improve system stability and reliability. As a result, the company has confirmed that it plans to be more tactful about where the Copilot branding appears in the operating system in the future.
Notepad is likely the first of many apps in Windows 11 that will see changes to the way Copilot is implemented. Copilot has also notoriously infected Paint, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see Microsoft soon change the way AI is implemented in that app. File Explorer is another area with a lot of Copilot hooks that will likely be reduced over the next year.
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