Microsoft weirdly renames "Explain with Copilot" feature on Notepad to "Define with Bing"

Microsoft has a history of weird renaming and rebranding. What we know today as “Copilot” was once called “Bing Chat.” Then, its DALL-E 3-powered image generator Image Creator from Designer was also once called Bing Image Creator. The list goes on, and now, it seems like the “Explain with Copilot” feature on Notepad has been renamed to “Define with Bing.”

Folks in the Windows 11 insider community discovered this subtle change. Trusted spotter @PhantomOfEarth shared on X (formerly Twitter) that Notepad version 11.2404.10.0 includes this change, visible when you highlight text and right-click. In our tests, if no text is highlighted, the feature is labeled “Search with Bing” instead.

It does seem trivial, sure, but even the smallest name changes like this can give us a trajectory about what Microsoft wants to do with the popular note-taking app. It’s like rebranding it back to Bing Chat. We know nothing about this for now, but who knows what the future holds? Maybe it’s a part of Microsoft’s cohesive strategy or just a random rebranding.

The “Explain with Copilot” feature first shipped a few months back with Notepad version 11.2401.25.0. It’s pretty much self-explanatory: you can ask Copilot in Windows directly from the note-taking app to help you digest complex log files, codes, or anything.

You can summon this feature by right-clicking the context menu option or through the Ctrl + E keyboard shortcut. 

Microsoft is betting big on Copilot, its AI-powered assistant tool. There’s no secret in that. So much so that the Redmond tech giant announced that it’s shipping Copilot+ PCs, a future of computing with so much AI left and right. 

Notepad is just a small subset of Windows 11 apps where Copilot is present. In the future, you’ll even see the AI tool powering almost every single aspect of the operating system.