Notepad will gather your data if you log in with a Microsoft account

I never thought I would ever see a Notepad login window, but it happened. Apparently, this change was applied in Windows Notepad version 11.2410.21.0.

Bob Pony reported on X about the Notepad sign-in option, and after I checked in Windows 11, I can confirm it.

The Microsoft warning can be pretty disgruntling for some:

Sign in with your Microsoft account to use Rewrite and its features in Notepad. When you’re signed in, Microsoft will collect information about your requests for AI safety and security purposes.

So, if you want to use Rewrite and the other AI features in Notepad, you have to log in with your Microsoft account, but your information will be collected.

However, I didn’t see the information page he found because I was already logged in and I couldn’t replicate it. So, I didn’t even receive this warning. I suppose I logged in before, but I can’t remember doing that. Moreover, when I logged off and tried to use the Rewrite feature, I was immediately prompted to log in.

The Rewrite feature was introduced to insiders in November 2004, but back then, we didn’t have information about Microsoft conditioning the feature usage with a Microsoft account login.

Well now we know, and if you watch the reactions to Bob Pony’s post on X, the users had immediate negative reactions to this change.

You could obviously log out and stay away from the Rewrite feature to avoid conceding your information to Microsoft.

Apart from this, Rewrite seems to be another Copilot-related feature that helps you rewrite, change the tone and the format of your text, and make it shorter or longer.

To use it, after login in with a Microsoft account, just click the Rewrite icon from the top bar and select the options from the drop-down menu.

Did you receive the warning message or were you logged into Notepad automatically? Let us know in the comments below.

The tiny, once-harmless Notepad in Windows is not so harmless and innocent anymore. As with any native app, Microsoft has now updated the writing editor to require users to sign up to it with a Microsoft account. You’ll have some extra capabilities which make Notepad quite versatile, but still. It might be frustrating for some. Here’s what you need to know.