Microsoft’s Edit on Windows is a new command line text editor

Microsoft is unveiling its own command line text editor on Windows today. Edit on Windows will be accessible by using “edit” in a command prompt, allowing developers to edit files within the command line. It’s part of a number of improvements to Windows developer tools at Microsoft’s Build conference today to improve the Windows experience for developers.

Edit on Windows is an open-source project by Microsoft, and it enables developers to edit files directly in the command line, just like vim, without having to switch to another app or window. Edit is small and lightweight, at less than 250KB in size. All the menu options on Edit have key bindings, and you can open multiple files and switch between them using the ctrl + P shortcut. Microsoft has also added find and replace to Edit, as well as match case and regular expression support as well. Edit also supports word wrapping.

“What motivated us to build Edit was the need for a default CLI text editor in 64-bit versions of Windows,” explains Christopher Nguyen, product manager of Windows Terminal. “32-bit versions of Windows ship with the MS-DOS Edit or, but 64-bit versions do not have a CLI editor installed inbox.”

Microsoft also wanted to avoid the “how do I exit vim?” meme, so it built its own text editor instead of relying on other available options. “Because we wanted to avoid this for a built-in default editor, we decided that we wanted a modeless editor for Windows (versus a modal editor where new users would have to remember different modes of operation and how to switch between them),” says Nguyen.

Edit on Windows will be available in the Windows Insider program in the coming months. Microsoft has more information about Edit on Windows over at its GitHub repo.

Microsoft is also rebranding its Windows Dev Home to Advanced Windows Settings today. “Advanced Windows Settings allow developers to easily control and personalize their Windows experience,” says Windows chief Pavan Davuluri. Instead of being a separate app, Advanced Windows Settings simply exposes additional toggles in the main Windows 11 settings interface, including the ability to enable File Explorer with GitHub version control details.