Compare the Top Text Editors for Mac as of August 2024

What are Text Editors for Mac?

Text editors are used to create, edit, modify and change configuration files and text source code, as well as programming language source code. Compare and read user reviews of the best Text Editors for Mac currently available using the table below. This list is updated regularly.

  • 1
    Visual Studio Code
    VSCode: Code editing. Redefined. Free. Built on open source. Runs everywhere. Go beyond syntax highlighting and autocomplete with IntelliSense, which provides smart completions based on variable types, function definitions, and imported modules. Debug code right from the editor. Launch or attach to your running apps and debug with break points, call stacks, and an interactive console. Working with Git and other SCM providers has never been easier. Review diffs, stage files, and make commits right from the editor. Push and pull from any hosted SCM service. Want even more features? Install extensions to add new languages, themes, debuggers, and to connect to additional services. Extensions run in separate processes, ensuring they won't slow down your editor. Learn more about extensions. With Microsoft Azure you can deploy and host your React, Angular, Vue, Node, Python (and more!) sites, store and query relational and document based data, and scale with serverless computing.
  • 2
    IntelliJ IDEA

    IntelliJ IDEA

    JetBrains

    IntelliJ IDEA analyzes your code, looking for connections between symbols across all project files and languages. Using this information it provides in-depth coding assistance, quick navigation, clever error analysis, and, of course, refactorings. ^⇧Space gives you a list of the most relevant symbols applicable in the current context. This and other completions are constantly learning from you, moving the members of the most frequently used classes and packages to the top of the suggestions list, so you can select them faster. Digs a tad deeper than Smart Completion and lists applicable symbols accessible via methods or getters in the current context. Say you're looking for a value of Project and only have the Module module declaration. Press ^⇧Space twice to get module.getProject() without any additional effort. Static members completion Lets you easily use static methods or constants. Offers a list of symbols matching your input and automatically adds required import statements.
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    Starting Price: $14.90 per user per month
  • 3
    Sublime Text

    Sublime Text

    Sublime HQ

    A sophisticated text editor for code, markup and prose. Use Goto Anything to open files with only a few keystrokes, and instantly jump to symbols, lines or words. Make ten changes at the same time, not one change ten times. Multiple selections allow you to interactively change many lines at once, rename variables with ease, and manipulate files faster than ever. The Command Palette holds infrequently used functionality, like sorting, changing the syntax and changing the indentation settings. With just a few keystrokes, you can search for what you want, without ever having to navigate through the menus or remember obscure key bindings. Sublime Text has a powerful, Python API that allows plugins to augment built-in functionality. Package Control can be installed via the command palette, providing simple access to thousands of packages built by the community.
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    Starting Price: $80 one-time fee
  • 4
    Apache NetBeans

    Apache NetBeans

    Apache Software Foundation

    Development Environment, Tooling Platform and Application Framework. Apache NetBeans is much more than a text editor. It highlights source code syntactically and semantically, lets you easily refactor code, with a range of handy and powerful tools. Apache NetBeans provides editors, wizards, and templates to help you create applications in Java, PHP and many other languages. Apache NetBeans can be installed on all operating systems that support Java, i.e, Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and BSD. Write Once, Run Anywhere, applies to NetBeans too.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 5
    Atom

    Atom

    GitHub

    Atom is a hackable text editor for the 21st century, built on Electron, and based on everything we love about our favorite editors. We designed it to be deeply customizable, but still approachable using the default configuration. A text editor is at the core of a developer’s toolbox, but it doesn't usually work alone. Work with Git and GitHub directly from Atom with the GitHub package. Create new branches, stage and commit, push and pull, resolve merge conflicts, view pull requests and more—all from within your editor. The GitHub package is already bundled with Atom, so you're ready to go! Atom works across operating systems. Use it on OS X, Windows, or Linux. Search for and install new packages or create your own right from Atom. Atom helps you write code faster with a smart and flexible autocomplete. Easily browse and open a single file, a whole project, or multiple projects in one window.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 6
    Obsidian

    Obsidian

    Obsidian

    Obsidian is a powerful knowledge base that works on top of a local folder of plain text Markdown files. The human brain is non-linear: we jump from idea to idea, all the time. Your second brain should work the same. In Obsidian, making and following "connections" is frictionless. Tend to your notes like a gardener; at the end of the day, sit back and marvel at your own knowledge graph. Note-taking is incredibly personal. Tried every app, but there's always something not quite right? You deserve better. Obsidian is built to be extensible. With 22 core plugins and 149 community plugins, set up your own toolkit and get running in minutes. You'll even be able to install third party plugins or build your own once Obsidian reaches v1.0. Sky's the limit. In our age when cloud services can shut down, get bought, or change privacy policy any day, the last thing you want is proprietary formats and data lock-in. With Obsidian, your data sits in a local folder.
    Starting Price: $25 one-time payment
  • 7
    BBEdit

    BBEdit

    Bare Bones Software, Inc.

    The leading professional HTML and text editor for the Mac, with high-performance features for editing, searching, and manipulation of text.
    Starting Price: $49.99
  • 8
    Komodo IDE

    Komodo IDE

    ActiveState Software

    Code faster with the IDE for today’s web languages – Python, PHP, Perl, Golang, Ruby and more.
  • 9
    Overleaf

    Overleaf

    Overleaf (Writelatex Limited)

    There's nothing complicated or difficult for you to install, and you can start using LaTeX right now, even if you've never seen it before. Overleaf comes with a complete, ready to go LaTeX environment which runs on our servers. With Overleaf you get the same LaTeX set-up wherever you go. By working with your colleagues and students on Overleaf, you know that you're not going to hit any version inconsistencies or package conflicts.
  • 10
    SlickEdit

    SlickEdit

    SlickEdit

    A true cross-platform, multi-language code editor, with support for over 60 languages on 9 platforms. Build or compile your project, then double-click on an error message in the Build window to jump to that location. Errors and warnings are marked with an icon in the left margin. In addition, the overview bar, positioned alongside the vertical scrollbar, marks the position of errors and warnings relative to the current scroll position in the document. To quickly scroll a marked location into view, you can drag the scrollbar slider to the mark, or click on the mark itself. SlickEdit's integrated debugging provides a convenient and easy to use front-end for many debuggers. Set breakpoints, step, inspect the stack, view variables/members - all the features you expect from a debugger. SlickEdit supports debugging for: GNU C/C++, Java, WinDbg, Clang C/C++ LLDB, Google Go, Python, Perl, Ruby, PHP, XCode, Scala, C# using Mono, Visual Basic using Mono, and Android JVM/NDK.
    Starting Price: $99.95
  • 11
    SeaMonkey

    SeaMonkey

    SeaMonkey

    The SeaMonkey project is a community effort to develop the SeaMonkey Internet Application Suite (see below). Such a software suite was previously made popular by Netscape and Mozilla, and the SeaMonkey project continues to develop and deliver high-quality updates to this concept. Containing an Internet browser, email & newsgroup client with an included web feed reader, HTML editor, IRC chat and web development tools, SeaMonkey is sure to appeal to advanced users, web developers and corporate users. Under the hood, SeaMonkey uses much of the same Mozilla Firefox source code which powers such products as Thunderbird. Legal backing is provided by the SeaMonkey Association (SeaMonkey e.V.). The Internet browser at the core of the SeaMonkey Internet Application Suite uses the same rendering engine and application platform as Mozilla Firefox, with popular features like tabbed browsing, feed detection, popup blocking, smart location bar, find as you type and a lot of other functionality.
  • 12
    UltraEdit

    UltraEdit

    IDM Computer Solutions

    For almost 3 decades, UltraEdit has been the go-to text editor for 2+ million users and many Fortune 100/500/1000 enterprise customers. Renowned for its power and performance in handling and processing huge files and data, UltraEdit is also a highly configurable and fully themed code editor with support for nearly any source language or syntax. Often called the "Swiss army knife" of text editors, UltraEdit is a powerful tool for users in a wide range of responsibilities and industries. From programming and project management to large file manipulation, from data sorting and column/block editing to remote (FTP/SFTP) file operations, from advanced file searching and text data reformatting, there's almost no problem that UltraEdit can't solve in the world of text editing. UltraEdit is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux and is supported by a professional development team and customer service staff located in the USA.
  • 13
    CodeLobster IDE

    CodeLobster IDE

    CodeLobster Software

    When you start developing with PHP, you face the problem of deciding which IDE to choose. Most companies sell their IDE's for high prices ($100-$500). We, on the other hand, offer a multifunctional portable IDE absolutely FREE with all these standard features: PHP/HTML/CSS/JavaScript highlighting; advanced PHP/HTML/CSS/JavaScript autocomplete; a powerful PHP debugger; context and dynamic Help; a code validator; a SQL manager and much more. CodeLobster IDE streamlines and simplifies the PHP development process. You don't need to keep in mind the names of functions, arguments, tags or their attributes we've implemented all these for you with autocomplete features for PHP, HTML, JavaScript and even CSS. And you can always get necessary help information by pressing F1 or using the special Help control. An internal free PHP Debugger allows you to validate your code locally.
  • 14
    Brackets

    Brackets

    Brackets

    With focused visual tools and preprocessor support, Brackets is a modern text editor that makes it easy to design in the browser. It's crafted from the ground up for web designers and front-end developers. Brackets is a lightweight, yet powerful, modern text editor. We blend visual tools into the editor so you get the right amount of help when you want it without getting in the way of your creative process. You'll enjoy writing code in Brackets. Brackets is an open-source project, supported by an active and passionate community. It's made by other web developers like you! Instead of jumping between file tabs, Brackets lets you open a window into the code you care about most. Want to work on the CSS that applies to a specific ID? Put your mouse cursor on that ID, push Command / Ctrl+E and Brackets will show you all the CSS selectors with that ID in an inline window so you can work on your code side-by-side without any popups.
  • 15
    Vim

    Vim

    Vim

    Vim is a highly configurable text editor built for creating and changing any kind of text efficiently. It is included as "vi" with most UNIX systems and with Apple OS X. Vim is rock stable and is continuously being developed to become even better. Vim is persistent, multi-level, with an extensive plugin system, support for hundreds of programming languages and file formats, powerful search and replace feature, and it integrates with many tools. Vim online is a central place for the Vim community to store useful Vim tips and tools. Vim has a scripting language that allows for plugin like extensions to enable IDE behavior, syntax highlighting, colorization as well as other advanced features. These scripts can be uploaded and maintained using Vim online. Vim stands for Vi IMproved. It used to be Vi IMitation, but there are so many improvements that a name change was appropriate. Vim is a text editor which includes almost all the commands from the Unix program "Vi".
  • 16
    TextMate

    TextMate

    MacroMates

    Powerful and customizable text editor with support for a huge list of programming languages and developed as open source. Making multiple changes at once, swapping pieces of code, and a lot more is made trivial with TextMate’s easy way to add multiple insertion points. Select what you want to search, what you want to search for, and TextMate will present the results in a way that makes it easy to jump between matches, extract matched text, or preview desired replacements. See what files have changes in the file browser view, what lines have changes in the editor view, bring up a diff of the current file’s changes, commit a subset, TextMate supports it all for all the major version control systems. One file mixing languages? Projects using different build systems? Third party code with different formatting preferences? TextMate can handle it all by associating detailed scope selectors with key shortcuts, settings, etc.
  • 17
    BlueGriffon

    BlueGriffon

    Disruptive Innovations

    The next-gen Web and EPUB Editor based on the rendering engine of Firefox. BlueGriffon® has a long list of famous ancestors and proudly inherits from all of them: Netscape®, Mozilla® Composer and Nvu. It is powered by Gecko, the same rendering engine you can find at the heart of Firefox®, and is filled with tons of powerful features. BlueGriffon® is used by millions of users around the world, including Universities, Governments and even the European Parliament. It is officially recommended by the French Government as the Web Authoring Tool for the French Administration in its effort to rely on and promote Free Software. BlueGriffon® is used by millions of users around the world, including Universities, Governments and even the European Parliament. It is officially recommended by the French Government as the Web Authoring Tool for the French Administration in its effort to rely on and promote Free Software.
    Starting Price: $87.75 one-time payment
  • 18
    Desech Studio
    Desech Studio is a free modern no code visual html/css editor which enables you to import your Figma, Sketch, AdobeXD design file to generate a clean html structure positioned with CSS grids. Then you can integrate it with React, Angular, Vue or Material Design. This is a product that I have worked on for quite some time and I'm excited to show it to the world. Desech Studio will always be free, with offline support and privacy conscious. Future plans are to integrate with Wordpress, and then implement features that will allow you to not need design software, and just design your application directly in Desech Studio.
    Starting Price: €9.99 per month
  • 19
    Boost Note

    Boost Note

    Boost Note

    Boost Note is a powerful, lightspeed collaborative workspace for developer teams. Built to empower developers productivity with the most solid note taking experience for developers. Not just a GitHub flavored markdown. Put diagrams with Charts.js, Mermaid, and PlantUML in documents to maximize visibility. Choose from keymaps like Vim, over 150 themes, and more to create your own Markdown editor. Manage your documents programmatically. Grab an authentication token and access Boost Note's APIs via simple HTTP requests. Automate your documentation work with over 2,000 external tool integrations via Zapier. Collaborate with your colleagues and share information your way. Have all your teams in one shared workspace. Write documents as a team with Boost Note's realtime editing. Check revision history of a doc. You can easily roll back to one of the previous versions in one click. Keep your important data safe through granula access control based on workspace.
    Starting Price: $3 per member per month
  • 20
    Pinegrow

    Pinegrow

    Pinegrow

    Pinegrow is a Mac, Windows and Linux web editor that lets you build responsive websites faster with live multi-page editing, CSS & SASS styling, CSS Grid editor and support for Bootstrap, Tailwind CSS, Foundation and WordPress. Pinegrow is a desktop website builder that opens and saves standard HTML and CSS files. That means you won’t be locked into a proprietary file format. Just open and edit your existing projects. Use Pinegrow alongside other web development tools. Build websites offline, without internet connection. Create as many websites as you want. Quickly build the layout of your webpage with powerful visual tools for adding, editing, moving, cloning and deleting HTML elements. Insert multiple elements with repeater and modify the layout of all selected elements with one move. Inspect active CSS rules, use rich visual controls, CSS Grid editor, Dev tools-like editor or code - all working together as one. Edit SASS and LESS, live, without any external tools.
    Starting Price: $6 per month
  • 21
    LightPaper

    LightPaper

    LightPaper

    Great features bundled in a simple app to help you take notes and write documents. LightPaper lets you write your documents/articles/blogs using powerful features such as markdown, folder navigator, real and live preview, shadow notes, multi-tabs, custom styles, distraction free mode, syntax highlighting, math rendering, full GFM support including GitHub tasks, Jekyll rendering, and more. Whether you are a professional writer, a blogger, a developer, a scholar, or a student, LightPaper has you covered for all your writing and note taking needs. Use LightPaper's powerful folder navigator to open multiple folders and browse through all your documents. You can not only open a document quickly by double clicking it but can also create a new document or a folder, delete files or folders or rename them. Quick Open feature allows you to quickly search through all your files. Favorite a file or folder to have it accessible any time you need it.
    Starting Price: $14.99 one-time payment
  • 22
    Textastic

    Textastic

    Textastic

    Textastic for Mac is the perfect desktop companion to the popular iOS code editor. With support for more than 80 source code and markup languages, Textastic brings the powerful syntax coloring engine of the iOS source code editor to the Mac. You can use your own TextMate, and Sublime Text, compatible syntax definitions. Textastic for Mac is based on the code editor that powers the iOS app. It uses native macOS APIs like Core Text for maximum speed. Code completion, file navigation with the symbol list and support for modern Mac features like Auto Save and Versions make your life easier. With iCloud Drive, you can sync your files across your macOS and iOS devices with ease. The app packs in support for 80 source code and markup languages, iCloud auto-save and macOS Versions. Built with the ability to import syntax definitions, themes and templates from TextMate.
    Starting Price: $7.99 one-time payment
  • 23
    CKEditor 5

    CKEditor 5

    CKSource

    CKEditor 5 is a modern WYSIWYG rich text editor that can easily accommodate the requirements of businesses and users in the age of digital transformation. It allows software creators and developers to build powerful writing solutions for applications of all sorts, within hours. Thanks to a fully customizable framework, ready-to-use builds, native integrations, extensive documentation, and reliable customer support, the editor can be fully tailored to your needs. To provide users with an all-around streamlined and collaborative writing experience, you can additionally include advanced features such as Track Changes and Comments, Revision History, and (if preferred) Real-time Collaboration! Easy Export to PDF and Word, responsive images, pagination, Markdown input and output support, and robust paste from Word and Google Docs are also popular choices.
  • 24
    Pulsar

    Pulsar

    Pulsar-Edit

    A community-led hyper-hackable text editor. Pulsar works across operating systems. Use it on OS X, Windows, or Linux. Search and install new packages or create your own right from Pulsar. Pulsar helps you write code faster with a smart and flexible autocomplete. Easily browse and open a single file, a whole project, or multiple projects in one window. Split your Pulsar interface into multiple panes to compare and edit code across files. Find, preview, and replace text as you type in a file or across all your projects.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 25
    Nova

    Nova

    Panic

    If we're being honest, Mac apps are a bit of a lost art. There are great reasons to make cross-platform apps — to start, they're cross-platform — but it's just not who we are. Founded as a Mac software company in 1997, our joy at Panic comes from building things that feel truly, well, Mac-like. Long ago, we created Coda, an all-in-one Mac web editor that broke new ground. But when we started work on Nova, we looked at where the web was today, and where we needed to be. It was time for a fresh start. It all starts with our first-class text-editor. It's new, hyper-fast, and flexible, with all the features you want: smart autocomplete, multiple cursors, a Minimap, editor overscroll, tag pairs and brackets, and way, way more. For the curious, Nova has built-in support for CoffeeScript, CSS, Diff, ERB, Haml, HTML, INI, JavaScript, JSON, JSX, Less, Lua, Markdown, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Sass, SCSS, Smarty, SQL, TSX, TypeScript, XML, and YAML.
  • 26
    Typora

    Typora

    Typora

    Typora gives you a seamless experience as both a reader and a writer. It removes the preview window, mode switcher, syntax symbols of markdown source code, and all other unnecessary distractions. Instead, it provides a real live preview feature to help you concentrate on the content itself. Typora allows you to manage your files easily, providing both file tree panel and articles (file list) side panel, allows you to manage your files easily. Organize your files your way, including putting in sync services, like Dropbox or iCloud. Automatically see the Outline structure of your documents in outline panel, which allows you to quickly go through the document and jump to any section with one click. Export to PDF with bookmarks. Go further and export or import. More formats, including docx, OpenOffice, LaTeX, MediaWiki, Epub, etc, can be exported or imported. See how large your document is in words, characters, lines, or reading minutes.
  • 27
    Quiver

    Quiver

    Quiver

    Quiver is a notebook built for programmers. It lets you easily mix text, code, Markdown and LaTeX within one note, edit code with an awesome code editor, live preview Markdown and LaTeX, and find any note instantly via the full-text search. A note in Quiver is comprised of cells, snippets of text, code, Markdown, LaTeX (via MathJax) or diagrams (sequence diagram, flowchart). You can freely mix different cell types within one note. You can set different languages for different code cells, too. The programmer's notebook should make code editing effortless. Quiver packs the awesome ACE code editor in code cells, with syntax highlighting support for more than 120 languages, over 20 themes, automatic indent and outdent, and much more. Quiver lets you write in Markdown with inline formatting and custom CSS options. A live preview window renders Markdown as you type. Quiver uses MathJax to typeset mathematical equations written in LaTeX.
  • 28
    CodeRunner

    CodeRunner

    CodeRunner

    A lightweight, multi-language programming text editor and IDE for macOS. CodeRunner was designed to support all of the most widely used programming languages and run them instantly. The app is configured to run code in 25 languages out-of-the-box, and additional languages can be configured to run by simply entering their terminal command. With over 200 syntax modes, lots of advanced editing features and thoughtful details, CodeRunner will quickly become your go-to editor for any and all kinds of text files. CodeRunner's code completion is the best you'll find in any IDE. Intelligent matching of typed text enables completions beyond single words. Quickly find the right completion among thousands with the extra-fuzzy search algorithm, helpful documentation snippets, and smart ranking of results. Don't clutter your code with print-statements for debugging. Instead, use CodeRunner's built-in debugging features to set breakpoints and step through your code.
    Starting Price: $19.99 one-time payment
  • 29
    VSCodium

    VSCodium

    VSCodium

    Microsoft’s vscode source code is open source (MIT-licensed), but the product available for download (Visual Studio Code) is licensed under this not-FLOSS license and contains telemetry/tracking. The VSCodium project exists so that you don’t have to download+build from source. This project includes special build scripts that clone Microsoft’s vscode repo, run the build commands, and upload the resulting binaries for you to GitHub releases. These binaries are licensed under the MIT license. Telemetry is disabled. Note for Mac OS X Mojave users, if you see “App can’t be opened because Apple cannot check it for malicious software” when opening VSCodium the first time, you can right-click the application and choose Open. This should only be required the first time opening on Mojave. The most up-to-date information on migrating from Visual Studio Code and other quirks you might encounter are documented.
  • 30
    JetBrains Fleet

    JetBrains Fleet

    JetBrains

    Built from scratch, based on 20 years of experience developing IDEs. JetBrains Fleet uses the IntelliJ code-processing engine, with a distributed IDE architecture and a reimagined UI. We built Fleet to be a fast and lightweight text editor for when you need to quickly browse and edit your code. It starts up in an instant so you can begin working immediately, and it can easily transform into an IDE, with the IntelliJ code-processing engine running separately from the editor itself. Fleet inherits the things that developers love the most from IntelliJ-based IDEs – project and context aware code completion, navigation to definitions and usages, on-the-fly code quality checks, and quick-fixes. Fleet’s architecture is designed to support a range of configurations and workflows. You can simply run Fleet just on your machine, or move some of the processes elsewhere – for example by locating the code processing in the cloud.
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