Change Default Encoding In Notepad For Windows 10

In computing, usually the character encoding is used for representing a stock or repository of characters followed by type of encoding system which assigns a number to each character for digital representation. When you are writing something digitally without a plain English, others won’t be able to read the content if no character encoding is specified. In the absence of character encoding, the readability of your written content may be lost. That’s why character encoding is important, especially in text editors such as Notepad in Windows 10. In this article, we will learn how you can change default encoding in Notepad for Windows 10.

In your system, characters are stored in using a special code. In simple language, character encoding unlocks that special code. You can read more about character encoding on different articles available on web. There is a lot of literature present about this topic. Now let us focus back to Notepad in Windows 10 which usually supports following encodings:

ANSI
UTF-16 LE
UTF-16 BE
UTF-8 BOM
UTF-8

Change Default Encoding In Notepad For Windows 10

Here, UTF-8 is the default encoding for Notepad. If your work requires the default encoding to be something else than UTF-8, you can perform below mentioned registry manipulation and change default encoding.

Change Default Encoding In Notepad For Windows 10

It is recommended to create a System Restore point first, before modifying the registry key.

1. Press + R and put regedit in Run dialog box to open Registry Editor (if you’re not familiar with Registry Editor, then click here). Click OK.

2. In left pane of Registry Editor window, navigate to following registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Notepad

Change Default Encoding In Notepad For Windows 10

3. In the right pane of Notepad registry key, right click and select New > DWORD Value. Name the newly created registry DWORD (REG_DWORD) as iDefaultEncoding. Set its Value data to either of the following values, depending upon type of default encoding you want: