TinyRetroPad is 130 times smaller than Windows Notepad, and it does everything that actually matters

Published Aug 18, 2026, 2:00 PM EDT Abhishek is an author at XDA who covers computing. He has loved computers since he got the Lenovo G570 in 2012. Abhishek holds a master's degree in computer applications and began his writing career in 2018. He loves writing how-to articles, listicles, and informational posts on popular operating systems and web services. He closely follows the Windows Insider program and tests new Insider builds to discover upcoming experimental features and upgrades. His past work includes long-term collaborations with reputed publications like Tom's Hardware, and Windows Latest. When not writing anything, he is busy watching new episodes of One Piece or searching for something binge-worthy. Bickering over a simple tool like Notepad is last on my list when I want to complain about lackluster feature implementations and apps in Windows. The modern WinUI3 apps look nice and blend with the OS design, but I don’t prioritize appearance over functionality in apps. Notepad has been a part of Windows for more than 40 years, dating back to the era when there were very few visual things you could do in an OS. Microsoft managed to transform Notepad into a modern app, but it’s become too bloated for my taste. I do prefer a few necessary feature add-ons, but it's now become a complex concoction of bad choices. To offer some respite, a former Microsoft engineer built a custom version of Notepad called TinyRetroPad. Its distinctive point is that it's lean, mindful of storage space, and still works like a charm. I tried it, and here’s what you get in the 2.7KB package. Why build a tiny Notepad? Because the current one has lost its focus For a long time, core Windows apps like Notepad or WordPad have stuck to small, focused roles. Retiring WordPad was also a weird decision, as it was the only free tool that could read RTF files. So I didn’t need to download the Microsoft Office suite just to open a DOCX or DOC file someone shared. Dave Plummer, the engineer behind TinyRetroPad, highlighted the ethos back when he worked for Microsoft. “You see, back in the '90s at Microsoft, we had some clear rules. Notepad was for plain text. WordPad was for RTF. And we were taught how important it was to never 'cross the streams.' So, Notepad stayed lean.” It’s clear from the quote above that the current version is trying to adopt a different personality. Notepad now wants to do everything, from account sync to Copilot integration, which is the opposite of what a user wants in a basic tool like a text editor. I don’t want to put every feature to shame because some of them, like tab support, are increasingly useful in modern use cases. For example, when you play with configuration files, or are trying to modify an existing script and need two tabs of the same file, or a new one, to move code chunks. But adding the rest of the barely useful feature set makes Notepad seem desperate to do everything. It tries to appear “intelligent” with those Copilot suggestions, but I don’t remember using them since they were added to the app’s UI. Memory usage also rose significantly in Windows 11’s Notepad, which further reduces its appeal. Dave took on a challenge to squeeze out every useless thing from Notepad to bring it close to the editor Windows XP offered. His intention was “No bloat. No telemetry. No nonsense,” and that’s a good enough reason. Building TinyRetroPad wasn’t easy The 4KB challenge Dave’s idea to build TinyRetroPad originates from the demoscene days of the 1980s, when 4KB was a deliberate challenge for developers to build a functional app. But the current Notepad is 352KB, so how is it possible to build an app that is more than 100 times smaller? I understand that the current Notepad storage needs are insignificant, but that doesn’t give the devs a reason to add bloat. Dave achieved the small size by relying on components and functionality already built into Windows and not building it from scratch. The code doesn’t add a fancy UI or a heavy context menu with AI and account-signing features. TinyRetroPad keeps its own executable tiny by using the Windows API for menus, windows, dialogs, file operations, and printing. The Rich Edit control provides all the necessary text-editing functionality. The tool also leans on Windows common controls/dialogs and UI infrastructure, which helps shrink the executable to 2.73KB without compromising core features. Think of it as an app that includes enough code to call Windows components to create everything. The GitHub page mentions it as “a fork of Dave's Tiny Editor (DTE) by Matt Power, an extension of tiny.asm HelloAssembly by Dave Plummer.” So it builds on that foundation, and the result is impressive. Each feature addition was a conscious decision rather than an “add first, think later” approach, which makes you rethink how modern app design has swayed away from its roots. Trying the 2.73KB text editor TinyRetroPad includes core features I didn’t expect a tool this small to offer anything beyond viewing and editing text files. But it includes find and replace, word wrap, date and time, and supports fonts and printing. It indeed resembles the old Notepad UI, and that’s good enough for viewing and editing configuration or script files. The one feature that I missed was tab support. But if you want the old Notepad experience, it’s one of the things you’ll have to compromise on. I tested with both small and large text files, and the text editor didn’t crash or become unresponsive with bigger sizes. However, Task Manager reported very high memory usage, around 500MB when the application launched, but it dropped to under 50MB after 5–7 minutes of use. Many users have complained about the spike, but it's due to the executable's heavy compression. It used Crinkler, a specialized executable compressor/linker, to build such a small binary. Because of that, the tool needs a lot of memory temporarily to decompress everything, which might be the reason for the spike. Windows needs a dumb text editor Notepad can survive without the extremely cluttered context menus or the Copilot integration, which Microsoft is planning to tone down in the future. I would like to see Notepad return to its lean nature while retaining only the useful features we all love. Meanwhile, TinyRetroPad is a great example that Microsoft can learn from and apply to its native text editor. It is so simple that it might appear dumb compared to current design and feature standards, but at least TinyRetroPad doesn’t give users a reason to complain. Windows Notepad A text editor with tabs and Copilot AI features for Windows 11 PCs.