How to Uninstall or reinstall Notepad in Windows 10 2004?

Microsoft made Notepad, Paint, and Wordpad as optional features in Windows 10 2004, what this means is you can uninstall them, and reinstall whenever needed without fuss.

For the last three decades, Notepad is an integral part of Windows and is the default application to open text files. You can open it by running notepad command in the Run dialog.

Notepad in Windows 10

Recently Notepad has received following new features in Windows 10 May 2020 Update

Displays line and column numbers in the status bar when the wrap is enabled.
Allows to Zoom In/out text with Ctrl+ and Ctrl – buttons. You can reset the text to the default Zoom level by using Ctrl+0 shortcuts.
The previous word can now be removed with Ctrl+Backspace.
Option added to Wrap-around Find/ Replace to Find dialog

If you don’t use Notepad, Wordpad, or for that matter, Microsoft Paint in Windows 10, you can uninstall them by visiting apps section in settings, here is how.

To uninstall Notepad in Windows 10

1. Open Settings > Apps

2. Click optional features

3. Search for Notepad and click Uninstall.

uninstall Notepad

Similarly, you can uninstall Microsoft Paint and Wordpad. Uninstalling Notepad requires to reboot your computer

notepad wordpad mspaint uninstalled

When you remove these applications, you can’t open text files, RTF files after reboot, as you’ll receive ” Windows cannot find ‘notepad’ ” and “Windows cannot find ‘Wordpad’ ” errors when you try to do so.

Windows cannot find notepad, wordpad and mspaint errors

Though the Windows Notepad app is available on Microsoft Store right now, you can’t install it because it requires you to be running Windows 10 build 19541.0 or later.

Here is how you can reinstall Notepad, Wordpad and Microsoft Paint again in Windows 10