We are pleased to announce the release of EmEditor v25.1.0.

1. Improved Chat with AI Experience

The “Chat with AI” feature has been further enhanced by Makoto Emura, making it even easier to use. AI responses now display beautifully with full Markdown formatting—links, text styles, and paragraph breaks are all preserved. The left sidebar in Chat with AI shows your chat history, so you can revisit previous conversations anytime. Starting a new chat is as simple as clicking the + New Chat button. Since each chat only uses its own context, managing conversations by topic can help reduce OpenAI API token usage and save on fees.

The “Chat with AI” web app is now hosted from the emeditor.com domain. However, all AI requests are sent and received directly from OpenAI without going through emeditor.com. No AI data is stored on our server. You can confirm this by pressing Ctrl+Shift+I in the “Chat with AI” custom bar to open DevTools, and using the Network tab to inspect AI requests. With this setup, there’s no need to run a local server for the web app, and it allows us to update or improve AI features independently of main EmEditor releases.

In v25.0, AI features were moved to a separate ChatAI plugin. However, due to a bug, the plugin might have been installed during updates even if you hadn’t used it before. This issue is now fixed. If you don’t use AI features, please check your installed programs via Windows Settings and uninstall the ChatAI plugin if needed. (Note: Earlier versions of the plugin couldn’t be uninstalled via EmEditor’s Plugin Settings if you used the installer version.)

If you do use AI features, the ChatAI plugin may not auto-update. Please download the latest version here and install it manually. Once you have v25.1.0, future updates will be automatic. You can check the plugin version in Windows settings or from Customize Plug-ins in EmEditor.

To use Chat with AI:

• Install both EmEditor Professional and the ChatAI plugin
• The Store App and 32-bit versions are not supported

2. Enhanced Bookmark Management

By popular demand, bookmark history improvements are back! In v21.6, we removed the “Do not clear bookmarks” option to prevent crashes from large histories, but many users requested its return. In v25.1, you can now set bookmark history to “Unlimited” in Customize > History. We’ve optimized memory usage and added notifications if your history grows too large.

A new List of Bookmarks command is now available by default in the Bookmarks menu, showing all your bookmarks in a convenient custom bar. Click to jump, or right-click to clear individual or all bookmarks. The List of Bookmarks feature is available in both Professional and Free editions, but bookmark history is only supported in Professional.

3. Performance and UI Improvements

EmEditor is now even faster! By removing legacy code that was only needed for compatibility with older versions and optimizing processes like program initialization, we’ve significantly boosted startup speed. According to our tests, EmEditor now starts up 58% faster thanks to these code optimizations and other enhancements.

Many operations are now noticeably quicker as well. For example, entering a string in the “Find” dialog and clicking “Select All” is now over 19 times faster, thanks to multithreading and further code improvements. Other tasks that have been sped up include replacing all instances of a particular string (even those spanning line breaks), vertical selection, bookmark-related commands, and adjusting filter settings with incremental search.

If you’re using a version older than EmEditor v22.3 (released more than three years ago) and want to keep your existing settings, we recommend first updating to v25.0.1 before upgrading to the latest version.

The user interface for custom bars has also been improved. A new dropdown button (▼) lets you move custom bars or switch between them easily, and you can drag bar titles to reposition them. Access the popup menu using the shortcut (ALT+. by default). These features are available in both Professional and Free.

4. Feedback and Bug Fixes

We’ve listened to your feedback:

• The “Very Dark” theme is now off by default, as some found it hard to read.
• The prompt to choose between Professional and Free editions no longer appears on first launch for corporate users (who cannot use Free), but individuals can still switch to Free via “Help” > “Downgrade”.
• Bugs reported during the preview version have been fixed.

We hope you enjoy using EmEditor, whether you choose the Professional or Free version. Please contact us or write in our forums if you have any questions, feature requests, or suggestions.

Thank you for using EmEditor!
— Yutaka Emura

Check out the EmEditor v25.0 New Features for more details and screenshots.

If you use the Desktop Installer version, you can select Check for Updates from the Help menu to download the latest version. If this method fails, please download the latest version, and run the downloaded installer. If you use the Desktop portable version, you can go to the Download page to get the latest version. Store App versions can be updated through the Microsoft Store (64-bit or 32-bit) after a few days.