I searched for this and found Maudite's question about text editors but they were all for Windows.
EditRocket - The Text and Source Code Editor. EditRocket is a source code editor, text editor, and software development tool for Windows, macOS / Mac OS X, and Linux with custom tools and support for the following programming languages. When you're coding, the right text editor will help you work faster and more efficiently – and some of the best ones are free. The best free text editor 2017. Mac and Linux is a big bonus.
As you have no doubt guessed, I am trying to find out if there are any text/code editors for the Mac besides what I know of. I'll edit my post to include editors listed.
Free
- Aquamacs and closer to the original EMacs
- TextMate2 - GPL
Commercial
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Thank you everybody that has added suggestions.
closed as not constructive by Bo Persson, Flexo♦, casperOneApr 2 '12 at 19:34
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39 Answers
I haven't used it myself, but another free one that I've heard good thing about is Smultron.
In my own research on this, I found this interesting article:Faceoff: Which Is The Best Mac Text Editor Ever?
I thought TextMate was everyone's favourite. I haven't met a programmer using a Mac who is not using TextMate.
- Emacs
- Vim
But I use TextMate, and can say that it is, without a doubt, worth every penny I paid for it.
Sublime text is awesome (http://www.sublimetext.com/2). Excellent search features, very fast and lightweight. Very decent code completion.
I also use RubyMine and WebStorm a lot (http://www.jetbrains.com/). They are excellent but not all purpose like TextMate.
I've tried Komodo out a bit, and I really like it so far. Aptana, an Eclipse variant, is also rather useful for a wide variety of things. There's always good ole' VI, too!
If you ever plan on making a serious effort at learning Emacs, immediately forget about Aquamacs. It tries to twist and bend Emacs into something it's not (a super-native OS X app). That might sound well and all, but once you realize that it completely breaks nearly every standard keybinding and behavior of Emacs, you begin to wonder why you aren't just using TextEdit or TextMate.
Carbon Emacs is a good Emacs application for OS X. It is as close as you'll get to GNU Emacs without compiling for yourself. It fits in well enough with the operating system, but at the same time, is the wonderful Emacs we all know and love. Currently it requires Leopard with the latest release, but most people have upgraded by now anyway. You can fetch it here.
Alternatively, if you want to use Vim on OS X, I've heard good things about MacVim.
Beyond those, there are the obvious TextEdit, TextMate, etc line of editors. They work for some people, but most 'advanced' users I know (myself included) hate touching them with anything shorter than a 15ft pole.
CotEditor is a Cocoa-based open source text editor. It is popular in Japan.
Best open source one is Smultron in my opinion, but it doesn't a torch to TextMate.
There's a new kid on the block - PHPStorm. I used it for a whole year. Its not free but offers an individual license of 49$ for a year, free for Open Source Developers.
- Speedy for an IDE - Its based on Java so looks somewhat like Eclipse/Netbeans but smokes them to dust in terms of speed (not as fast as Coda/Textmate as this is an IDE).
- Keyboard shortcuts galore - I seldom touched the mouse while developing using PHPStorm (that's what I didn't like about Coda)
- Subversion support built-in - Didn't need to touch Versions or any other SVN client on Mac
- Supports snippets, templates - zen-coding is supported as well
- Supports projects, though in separate windows
- File search, code search
- code completion, supports PHPDoc code completion too
- BBEdit makes all other editors look like Notepad.
It handles gigantic files with ease; most text editors (TextMate especially) slow down to a dead crawl or just crash when presented with a large file.
The regexp and multiple-file Find dialogs beat anything else for usability.
The clippings system works like magic, and has selection, indentation, placeholder, and insertion point tags, it's not just dumb text.
BBEdit is heavily AppleScriptable. Everything can be scripted.
In 9.0, BBEdit has code completion, projects, and a ton of other improvements.
I primarily use it for HTML, CSS, JS, and Python, where it's extremely strong. Some more obscure languages are not as well-supported in it, but for most purposes it's fantastic.
The only devs I know who like TextMate are Ruby fans. I really do not get the appeal, it's marginally better than TextWrangler (BBEdit's free little brother), but if you're spending money, you may as well buy the better tool for a few dollars more.
jEdit does have the virtue of being cross-platform. It's not nearly as good as BBEdit, but it's a competent programmer's editor. If you're ever faced with a Windows or Linux system, it's handy to have one tool you know that works.
Vim is fine if you have to work over ssh and the remote system or your computer can't do X11. I used to love Vim for the ease of editing large files and doing repeated commands. But these days, it's a no-vote for me, with the annoyance of the non-standard search & replace (using (foo) groups instead of (foo), etc.), painfully bad multi-document handling, lack of a project/disk browser view, lack of AppleScript, and bizarre mouse handling in the GVim version.
jEdit runs on OS X, being Java-based. It's somewhat similar to TextMate, I think.
Editra looks interesting, but I've not tried it myself.
TextMate not for 'advanced programmers'. That does not make sense, TextMate contains everything an 'advanced programmer' would want. It allows them to define a bundle that allows them to quickly set up the way they want their source code formatted, or one that follows the project guidelines, quick easy access to create entire structures and classes based on typing part of a construct and hitting tab.
TextMate is my tool of choice, it is fast, lightweight and yet contains all of the features I would want in a tool to program with. While it is not tightly integrated in Xcode, that is not a problem for me as I don't write software for Mac OS X. I write software for FreeBSD.
Definitely BBEdit. I code, and BBEdit is what I use to code.
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You might consider one of the classics - they're both free, extensible and have large user bases that extend beyond the Mac:
- Aquamacs - emacs for OS X (emacs in a shell window is also an option)
- Mac Vim - VI with a Mac-specific GUI (vim in a shell window is also an option)
I prefer an old-school editing setup. I use command-line vim embedded in a GNU Screen 'window' inside of iTerm.
This may not integrate well with XCode, but I think it works great for developing and using command-line programs. If you spend any significant time working in a terminal, GNU Screen is worth the 30 minutes it takes to master the basic terminal multiplexing concepts.
Coda's great for PHP/ASP/HTML style development. Great interface, multiple-file search and replace with regexp support, slick FTP/SFTP/etc integration for browsing and editing remote files, SVN integration, etc.
It now supports plugins and the plugin editor can import TextMate bundles, so there's a bright future there. There aren't a lot of must-have plugins yet because the plugin support was newly introduced with version 1.6 a few months back. It's a popular app, though, so I expect more in the future.
The 'killer features' for me are:* Seamless editing of remote files* Code navigator (symbol browser; pane that lists functions etc)
Most people aren't really into using symbol browsers but as I have to maintain a lot of unfamiliar code I find them invaluable.
I'm not sure that Coda has the 'raw power' of TextMate though. I plan on getting familiar with TextMate next.
I make use of Komodo IDE. It supports a huge number of languages, and is customisable but is a bit expensive (my company bought me a copy). A really good alternative is the free version called Komodo Edit. Loads really quickly and has a decent feature list and I find myself turning to it rather than the full IDE for a lot of jobs.
I actually prefer EditRocket over TextMate. I use it on both my Mac and Ubuntu machines. It is nice to use the same editor on multiple operating systems.
Textmate is state of the Art editor, but if someone is thinking about developing on several platforms without awkward memory eaters monsters like jedit, eclipse, netbeans etc take a look at geany (geany.org). It is free. The only problem the editor has not esthetic look and feel on Mac OS X :)
Fraise is a nice free option. It has some rough edges, but you can't beat the price. I believe it's a fork or successor of Smultron.
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I use Eclipse as my primary editor (for Python) but I always keep SubEthaEdit handy as my supplemental text editor (free trial, 30 euros to license). It's not super-complicated but it does what I need.
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Another vote for Smultron. I used it when doing some XQuery programming and being able to define a keyword files for syntax color highlighting was great.
I have installed both Smultron and Textwrangler, but find myself using Smultron most of the time.
I would love to use a different editor than XCode for coding, but I feel, that no other editor integrates tightly enough with it to be really worthwhile.
However, given some time, TextMate might eventually get to that point. At the moment though, it primarily lacks debugging features and refactoring.
For everything that does not need XCode, I love TextMate. If I had another Mac-user in my workgroup I would probably consider SubEthaEdit for its collaboration features. If it is Emacs you want, I would recommend Aquamacs (more Mac-like) or Carbon Emacs (more GNU-Emacs-like)
I've been using BBEdit for years. It's rock-solid, fast, and integrates into my Xcode workflow decently well. (I'm not sure anything integrates into Xcode as well as the built-in editor, but who has time to wait for the built-in editor?)
For small team projects which don't use a source control system, or for single user editing on multiple machines, SubEthaEdit comes highly recommended.
Eclipse and Netbeans have text editors among a whole lot of other stuff. I don't think you would want to wait 10 seconds for your text editor to become ready :/...If you are going to spend some serious time coding then spend some time and learn to use vim (emacs too but, I recommend vim)
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A few days ago I decided to start working on a school assignment; just some basic HTML stuff. My initial response to fire up Notepad++ proved useless, as I had moved to Mac OS X a few weeks ago. Unwilling to fire up my Windows emulation, I went looking for an alternative coding text editor.
To clarify, with code-writing applications, I mean (free) text editors that are willing to highlight your code – compilation and validation optional, but often included.
I discovered two things during that search. Firstly, Mac OS X has far less software alternatives than Windows, but second, nearly all of them are decent applications. Not having to sift through all that junk, I was quickly set up with a number of excellent coding text editor alternatives.
Komodo Edit
We’ll start out with a rather advanced application. If you want something lighter, check the application below, or scroll down to the bottom of the article for some additional recommendations.
Komodo Edit (based on Komodo IDE) is built on the Mozilla code base, and offers the same extendability. That’s right – you can download extensions for this one. Whatever the flavor, you’ll be able to fit Komodo Edit to your personal taste. Oh, and did I mention that it’s also available for Windows and Linux?
Komodo Edit offers syntax coloring and syntax validation, but the application also adds multi-language file support, autocomplete and Vi emulation to the package. If you’re a sucker for extra functionality, you’re right at home with Komodo Edit.
Smultron
The coding text editor I ended up using is Smultron. Now mind, there’s a reason why I didn’t start the article with it. The developer, Peter Borg, has discontinued the work on the application. For now, you are still greeted by a near-blank page with a short explanation and the download links, but there is no guarantee of how long the application will remain available, or supported.
For now though, Smultron remains a great coding application. Comprehensive and accessible for beginners (like me), but also housing a number of tools for the more advanced user. Included are HTML, plist and XML validators, Java compilers, and several converters. Syntax highlighting is of course included for most popular (and unpopular) programming languages.
MacVim
Vim is one of the older, and also more popular coding text editors in Linux. It’s open source and famous for being text-controllable. In other words, it hasn’t got a Graphical User Interface by default.
MacVim is a port of Vim to the Mac OS X platform. And yes, it does have a GUI (phew).
Since all the work on MacVim is done by ‘fans’, the application is usually a little behind on the official application. Just a little, though – MacVim tends to be quick on the ball, and is a rock solid text/coding application.
At the core, MacVim is very similar to the official application, save that it comes with OS X support, and a few added bonuses. It’s loaded with incredible features, but often needs a bit of trickery to get the most out of it. Learning to work with the application isn’t too hard, but its audience consists for the biggest part out of advanced users.
Also noteworthy is the license; MacVim is released as charity-ware. In other words, if you like the application, they encourage you to support needy children in Uganda.
Other mentionworthy coding text editor alternatives are jEdit and Aquamacs. What do you use to write your code? Let us know your preferred applications in the comments!