Microsoft has resurrected its previously popular MS-DOS-based text editor, Edit, as a minimalist, open-source command-line application that can now run natively in Windows 11.
This updated version of Edit brings several modern enhancements while maintaining its incredibly small footprint of approximately 250 KB. New features include mouse support for easier interaction, customizable key bindings to suit user preferences, the ability to wrap long lines of text for better readability, and the convenience of editing multiple files simultaneously within the same instance. Furthermore, the revived editor supports case-sensitive search and replace functionality, including the use of regular expressions for more advanced text manipulation. Its tiny size makes it feasible for Microsoft to readily include it within Windows 11 ISO images.
Christopher Nguyen, Product Manager for Windows Terminal, explained the rationale behind this revival: “The inspiration for Edit came from the need for a default CLI text editor on 64-bit versions of Windows. 32-bit versions of Windows come with MS-DOS Edit, but 64-bit versions don’t have it installed.” This addresses a long-standing absence of a built-in, lightweight command-line text editor in 64-bit Windows environments.
Currently, users can manually download and utilize the new Edit application from its open-source repository on GitHub. However, Microsoft plans to integrate Edit directly into test builds of the Windows 11 operating system in the coming months. Following this testing phase, the application is expected to be included in the stable release of Windows 11 with a future update, providing a readily available, lightweight text editing tool for all users.