Windows 11 Insiders get AI upgrades in Paint and Notepad, including prompt-based colouring pages
Microsoft is beginning to modernise two of Windows’ most familiar built-in apps, Paint and Notepad, with updates that lean heavily into AI. The new features are currently rolling out to Windows Insiders on Windows 11 in the Canary and Dev channels, giving early testers a first look before any wider release.
Paint adds a “Colouring book” generator
The headline change lands in Microsoft Paint. In the latest Paint update (version 11.2512.191.0), Microsoft has introduced a new option called Colouring book inside the Copilot menu. The idea is simple: type a short description, and Paint produces black-and-white outline drawings designed to be coloured in.
After entering a prompt, the app generates four different outline variations. Users can insert any of them onto the canvas, colour them digitally in Paint, or print them out for a traditional colouring session with pencils or crayons.
Microsoft is positioning this as a creative, low-effort way to make personalised colouring sheets, from quick cartoon-style scenes to themed designs for kids. For now, the feature is tied to Copilot+ PCs, so it may not appear on every Windows 11 device straight away.
A practical improvement: better control for the Fill tool
Alongside the AI feature, Paint is also getting a more traditional quality-of-life upgrade: a fill tolerance slider for the Fill tool. This gives users finer control over how aggressively Paint fills an area, helping reduce the annoying “spillover” effect when colours bleed into nearby sections.
Unlike the Colouring book tool, this improvement is expected to be more widely available, since it is not positioned as a Copilot+ exclusive.
Notepad gets streaming AI tools and richer formatting
Notepad is also receiving a notable update (version 11.2512.10.0), especially for people who use it for quick drafting and editing. Microsoft says its AI-powered options, Write, Rewrite, and Summarise, now support streaming results. In practice, that means the text begins to appear progressively, so users can review and react sooner instead of waiting for the full output to finish generating.
Microsoft notes that using these AI features requires signing in with a Microsoft account, which signals that Notepad’s AI tools are becoming a more integrated, “connected” part of the Windows experience.
On top of that, Notepad is adding a new welcome or first-run style screen designed to highlight features and help users get started faster. Markdown handling is also improving, with added support for features like strikethrough and nested lists, making Notepad a more practical option for lightweight formatting without switching apps.
What to expect next
For now, these updates are framed as Insider features, which means Microsoft can still tweak how they work, expand availability, or change requirements before rolling them out broadly. Still, the direction is clear: Microsoft wants even its simplest Windows apps to benefit from the same AI push showing up across the rest of the OS.
