Windows Calculator is a

software calculator A software calculator is a calculator that has been implemented as a computer program, rather than as a physical hardware device. They are among the simpler interactive software tools, and, as such, they provide operations for the user to sele ...

developed by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...

and included in

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for se ...

. In its

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on ...

incarnation it has four modes: standard, scientific, programmer, and a graphing mode. The standard mode includes a number pad and buttons for performing arithmetic operations. The scientific mode takes this a step further and adds exponents and trigonometric function, and programmer mode allows the user to perform operations related to

computer programming Computer programming is the process of performing a particular computation (or more generally, accomplishing a specific computing result), usually by designing and building an executable computer program. Programming involves tasks such as anal ...

. In 2020, a graphing mode was added to the Calculator, allowing users to graph equations on a coordinate plane. The Windows Calculator is one of a few applications that have been bundled in all versions of Windows, starting with Windows 1.0. Since then, the calculator has been upgraded with various capabilities. In addition, the calculator has also been included with

Windows Phone Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design lan ...

and

Xbox One The Xbox One is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. Announced in May 2013, it is the successor to Xbox 360 and the third base console in the Xbox series of video game consoles. It was first released in North America, parts of ...

History

Microsoft Windows NT Calculator Version 3

A simple arithmetic calculator was first included with Windows 1.0. In

Windows 3.0 Windows 3.0 is the third major release of Microsoft Windows, launched in 1990. It features a new graphical user interface (GUI) where applications are represented as clickable icons, as opposed to the list of file names seen in its predeces ...

, a scientific mode was added, which included

exponent Exponentiation is a mathematical operation, written as , involving two numbers, the '' base'' and the ''exponent'' or ''power'' , and pronounced as " (raised) to the (power of) ". When is a positive integer, exponentiation corresponds to r ...

s and

root In vascular plants, the roots are the organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often below the su ...

logarithm In mathematics, the logarithm is the inverse function to exponentiation. That means the logarithm of a number to the base is the exponent to which must be raised, to produce . For example, since , the ''logarithm base'' 10 ...

factorial In mathematics, the factorial of a non-negative denoted is the product of all positive integers less than or equal The factorial also equals the product of n with the next smaller factorial: \begin n! &= n \times (n-1) \times (n-2) \ ...

-based functions,

trigonometry Trigonometry () is a branch of mathematics that studies relationships between side lengths and angles of triangles. The field emerged in the Hellenistic world during the 3rd century BC from applications of geometry to astronomical studies. ...

(supports

radian The radian, denoted by the symbol rad, is the unit of angle in the International System of Units (SI) and is the standard unit of angular measure used in many areas of mathematics. The unit was formerly an SI supplementary unit (before that ...

, degree and

gradian In trigonometry, the gradian, also known as the gon (from grc, γωνία, gōnía, angle), grad, or grade, is a unit of measurement of an angle, defined as one hundredth of the right angle; in other words, there are 100 gradians in 90 degree ...

s angles), base conversions (2, 8, 10, 16), logic operations,

statistical Statistics (from German: '' Statistik'', "description of a state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a scientific, industr ...

functions such as single variable statistics and linear regression.

Windows 9x

Until

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturi ...

, it uses an

IEEE 754-1985 IEEE 754-1985 was an industry standard for representing floating-point numbers in computers, officially adopted in 1985 and superseded in 2008 by IEEE 754-2008, and then again in 2019 by minor revision IEEE 754-2019. During its 23 years, it was th ...

double-precision floating-point Double-precision floating-point format (sometimes called FP64 or float64) is a floating-point number format, usually occupying 64 bits in computer memory; it represents a wide dynamic range of numeric values by using a floating radix point. Flo ...

, and the highest representable number by the calculator is 2¹⁰²⁴, which is slightly above 10³⁰⁸ (~1.80 × 10³⁰⁸). In

Windows 98 Windows 98 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. The second operating system in the 9x line, it is the successor to Windows 95, and was released to ...

and later, it uses an

arbitrary-precision arithmetic In computer science, arbitrary-precision arithmetic, also called bignum arithmetic, multiple-precision arithmetic, or sometimes infinite-precision arithmetic, indicates that calculations are performed on numbers whose digits of precision are li ...

library, replacing the standard

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operati ...

floating point In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic that represents real numbers approximately, using an integer with a fixed precision, called the significand, scaled by an integer exponent of a fixed base. For example, 12.345 can ...

library. It offers bignum precision for basic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) and 32 digits of precision for advanced operations (

square root In mathematics, a square root of a number is a number such that ; in other words, a number whose '' square'' (the result of multiplying the number by itself, or  ⋅ ) is . For example, 4 and −4 are square roots of 16, because . ...

transcendental function In mathematics, a transcendental function is an analytic function that does not satisfy a polynomial equation, in contrast to an algebraic function. In other words, a transcendental function "transcends" algebra in that it cannot be expressed ...

s). The largest value that can be represented on the Windows Calculator is currently and the smallest is . (Also ! calculates the

gamma function In mathematics, the gamma function (represented by , the capital letter gamma from the Greek alphabet) is one commonly used extension of the factorial function to complex numbers. The gamma function is defined for all complex numbers excep ...

which is defined over all real numbers, only excluding the negative integers).

Windows 2000, XP and Vista

Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was released to manufacturing on December 15, 1999, and was offici ...

digit grouping A decimal separator is a symbol used to separate the integer part from the fractional part of a number written in decimal form (e.g., "." in 12.45). Different countries officially designate different symbols for use as the separator. The choi ...

is added. Degree and base settings are added to menu bar. The calculators of

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was release to manufacturing, released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Wind ...

and Vista were able to calculate using numbers beyond 10¹⁰⁰⁰⁰, but calculating with these numbers (e.g. 10^2^2^2^2^2^2^2...) does increasingly slow down the calculator and make it unresponsive until the calculation has been completed. These are the last versions of Windows Calculator, where calculating with

binary Binary may refer to: Science and technology Mathematics * Binary number, a representation of numbers using only two digits (0 and 1) * Binary function, a function that takes two arguments * Binary operation, a mathematical operation that ta ...

/ decimal/ hexadecimal/

octal The octal numeral system, or oct for short, is the base-8 number system, and uses the digits 0 to 7. This is to say that 10octal represents eight and 100octal represents sixty-four. However, English, like most languages, uses a base-10 number ...

numbers is included into scientific mode. In Windows 7, they were moved to ''programmer mode'', which is a new separate mode that co-exists with ''scientific mode''.

Windows 7

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, 2009. It is the successor to Windows Vista, released nearly ...

, separate programmer, statistics, unit conversion, date calculation, and worksheets modes were added. Tooltips were removed. Furthermore, Calculator's interface was revamped for the first time since its introduction. The base conversion functions were moved to the programmer mode and statistics functions were moved to the statistics mode. Switching between modes does not preserve the current number, clearing it to 0. The highest number is now limited to 10¹⁰⁰⁰⁰ again. In every mode except programmer mode, one can see the history of calculations. The app was redesigned to accommodate multi-touch. Standard mode behaves as a simple checkbook calculator; entering the sequence 6 * 4 + 12 / 4 - 4 * 5 gives the answer 25. In scientific mode, order of operations is followed while doing calculations (multiplication and division are done before addition and subtraction), which means 6 * 4 + 12 / 4 - 4 * 5 = 7. In programmer mode, inputting a number in decimal has a lower and upper limit, depending on the data type, and must always be an integer. Data type of number in decimal mode is signed n-bit integer when converting from number in hexadecimal, octal, or binary mode. Windows 8

On the right of the main Calculator, one can add a panel with date calculation, unit conversion and worksheets. Worksheets allow one to calculate a result of a chosen field based on the values of other fields. Pre-defined templates include calculating a car's fuel economy (mpg and L/100 km), a vehicle lease, and a mortgage. In pre-beta versions of Windows 7, Calculator also provided a Wages template.

Windows 8.1

While the traditional Calculator is still included with Windows 8.1, a Metro-style Calculator is also present, featuring a full-screen interface as well as normal, scientific, and conversion modes.

Windows 10

The Calculator in non-LTSC editions of

is a Universal Windows Platform app. In contrast, Windows 10 LTSC (which does not include universal Windows apps) includes the traditional calculator, but which is now named . Both calculators provide the features of the traditional calculator included with Windows 7, such as unit conversions for volume, length, weight, temperature, energy, area, speed, time, power, data, pressure and angle, and the history list which the user can clear. Both the universal Windows app and LTSC's register themselves with the system as handlers of a '' pseudo-protocol. This registration is similar to that performed by any other well-behaved application when it registers itself as a handler for a filetype (e.g. ) or protocol (e.g. ). All Windows 10 editions (both LTSC and non-LTSC) continue to have a , which however is just a stub that launches (via ShellExecute) the handler that is associated with the '' pseudo-protocol. As with any other protocol or filetype, when there are multiple handlers to choose from, users are free to choose which handler they prefer either via the classic control panel ('Default programs' settings) or the immersive UI settings ('Default Apps' settings) or from the command prompt via . In the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, a currency converter mode was added to Calculator. On 6 March 2019, Microsoft released the

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the w ...

for Calculator on

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continu ...

under the

MIT License The MIT License is a permissive free software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the late 1980s. As a permissive license, it puts only very limited restriction on reuse and has, therefore, high license comp ...

Windows 11

In Windows 11, the Calculator app's user interface was modified to match the design of Windows 11 and a new settings page is present for users to toggle between the themes of the app without changing the operating system's theme. In 2021, Microsoft announced to migrate the codebase of the Calculator app to C# in order to welcome more developers to contribute to the app.

Features

By default, Calculator runs in standard mode, which resembles a four-function calculator. More advanced functions are available in scientific mode, including

s, numerical base conversions, some

logical operators In logic, a logical connective (also called a logical operator, sentential connective, or sentential operator) is a logical constant. They can be used to connect logical formulas. For instance in the syntax of propositional logic, the binary c ...

operator precedence In mathematics and computer programming, the order of operations (or operator precedence) is a collection of rules that reflect conventions about which procedures to perform first in order to evaluate a given mathematical expression. For exampl ...

, degree and gradians support as well as simple single-variable statistical functions. It does not provide support for user-defined functions,

complex number In mathematics, a complex number is an element of a number system that extends the real numbers with a specific element denoted , called the imaginary unit and satisfying the equation i^= -1; every complex number can be expressed in the fo ...

s, storage variables for intermediate results (other than the classic accumulator memory of pocket calculators), automated polar- cartesian coordinates conversion, or support for two-variables statistics. Calculator supports

keyboard shortcut computing, a keyboard shortcut also known as hotkey is a series of one or several keys to quickly invoke a software program or perform a preprogrammed action. This action may be part of the standard functionality of the operating system or ...

s; all Calculator features have an associated keyboard shortcut. Calculator in programmer mode cannot accept or display a number larger than a signed QWORD (16 hexadecimal digits/64 bits). The largest number it can handle is therefore 0x7FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF (decimal 9,223,372,036,854,775,807). Any calculations in programmer mode which exceed this limit will overflow, even if those calculations would succeed in other modes. In particular,

scientific notation Scientific notation is a way of expressing numbers that are too large or too small (usually would result in a long string of digits) to be conveniently written in decimal form. It may be referred to as scientific form or standard index form, o ...

is not available in this mode.

Issues

* For some

operations, such as

operator (sqrt(4) − 2 = −8.1648465955514287168521180122928e−39) causing the number to be calculated incorrectly due to

catastrophic cancelation In numerical analysis, catastrophic cancellation is the phenomenon that subtracting good approximations to two nearby numbers may yield a very bad approximation to the difference of the original numbers. For example, if there are two studs, one L_ ...

. * Older versions of the universal Calculator in non-LTSC editions of

doesn't use any regional format (can be set in Region Control Panel) that are different from the app's display language for number formatting (the app's language is English (United States) but Windows's regional format is set to a different format).

Calculator Plus

Calculator Plus is a separate application for

and

Windows Server 2003 Windows Server 2003 is the sixth version of Windows Server operating system produced by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows NT family of operating systems and was released to manufacturing on March 28, 2003 and generally available on April 24, 2 ...

users that adds a 'Conversion' mode over the Windows XP version of the Calculator. The 'Conversion' mode supports

unit conversion Conversion of units is the conversion between different units of measurement for the same quantity, typically through multiplicative conversion factors which change the measured quantity value without changing its effects. Overview The process ...

and

currency conversion In finance, an exchange rate is the rate at which one currency will be exchanged for another currency. Currencies are most commonly national currencies, but may be sub-national as in the case of Hong Kong or supra-national as in the case of ...

. Currency exchange rates can be updated using the built-in update feature, which downloads exchange rates from the

European Central Bank The European Central Bank (ECB) is the prime component of the monetary Eurosystem and the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) as well as one of seven institutions of the European Union. It is one of the world's most important centr ...

References

External links

Windows Calculator
on

Microsoft Store Microsoft Store (formerly known as Windows Store) is a digital distribution platform operated by Microsoft. It started as an app store for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 as the primary means of distributing Universal Windows Platform app ...

Source code on GitHub

Microsoft Calculator Plus
{{Windows Components 1985 software Formerly proprietary software Free and open-source software Mathematical software Microsoft free software Software calculators Software using the MIT license Universal Windows Platform apps Windows components Xbox One software Windows Phone software