If you are an advert user of a computer, then you would know the inevitable use of text editors on a daily basis. Whether it is the need to take notes or do programming, there is a broad range of functions that text editors perform. Usage for Mac has been increased compared to Windows and therefore looking for best text editors for Mac is not an easy task to choose when there are many best text editors for Mac available in the market. Every OS comes
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Every OS comes with the inbuilt ability of text editor like Notes in iOS or Text Edit in OS X providing the same universal function. But 10 best text editors for Mac OS are must for high-end programming.
TextEdit is the default text editor in macOS, and it’s just as barebones as the default text editor in Windows, Notepad. Naturally, many Mac users sooner or later look for an alternative, and they often stumble upon Notepad++.
If one wants to create software and apps that require complex coding, it becomes intermediate necessary to look for the best text editor for programming on Mac. To get a laptop with an excellent writing tool that offers no distraction, it is a must that it should be loaded with 10 best text editors for Mac. So 10 best text editors for Mac OS guide is here to sort out best for you .
Contents
- 2 Best Text Editors for Mac
What is a MAC iOS Code Editor?
Now before you look for best text editors for Mac one must know little about text editor. A text editor is a program that serves the purpose of editing the plain text files. Now a regular text editor is just used for text editing and formatting whereas on the other hand there are programming text editors that are specifically used for writing codes and are intended to serve the purpose of code formatting and indentation.
Best Text Editors for Mac
So here you will get the 10 best text editors for Mac Programming that may even extend the use of debugging.
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1. Brackets- Best Text Editor
Bracket is one of the 10 best text editor for Mac coding and is a free and open source that has gained a big name in the tech industry. The most favorite thing about Bracket is that it has an elegant interface and comes with a unique feature called as Extract. It allows you to customize font, measurements, colors, gradients and you can even grab PSD file into the clean CSS ready to use for a web page. Apart from this the text editor also supports extension, inline editors, and previews. It also supports W3C Validation, Beautify for JS, HTML and CSS, Git Integration and much more. These features make this tool stand out of all other text editor tools.
You can download this versatile text editing tool from the link
2. Text Wrangler
The next pick in the list of 10 best text editors for Mac is Text Wrangler that is developed by Bare Bones. It includes all those features that are must for hardcore programmers and developers. Those who want to change the order of certain columns in a CSV, or a server admin that requires writing scripts. It is a free tool and is almost similar to Notepad ++ allowing you to do all necessary editing and is a tool worth looking forward. This tool can be considered as the short version of BBEdit and is the simplest tool to use as the script writer.
So do try this popular text editor for Mac by downloading it from the link-
3. BBEdit
The developing company of BBEdit, Bare Bones claims that it is one of the best text editor for Mac OS. This tool is Holy Grail for Mac users. It is mighty and incredibly rich text and HTML editing tool that proves to be best for Web developers. It supports advanced features like editing, searching, and manipulation of text. You can also use this tool to command files, folders, text, and servers and also boasts the syntax support and color coding. But when you get such highlighted features under one umbrella you need to pay the price and is not available for free to support your needs.
Follow the link to use this tool
4. TextMate
Talking about another massive and freely available text editor for Mac programming is TextMate that has made its approach to Mac users. This tool has easy to use graphical interface, neat and is powerful of UNIX command console that is equally useful for both dedicated and amateur programmers. It combines some great features like search and replaces within the project, auto-indentation, column selection, word completion from the current document, dynamic outlines, and regular expression support. It is a text editor that also supports Xcode and helps in building Xcode projects efficiently. With this tool, you can also use its inbuilt themes for visual liking.
Get this tool for free
5. Sublime Text
With the wide variety of features and high customization options Sublime Text is the popular text editor that offers you the best interface. It is one of those text editors for Mac that supports code and markup. It has one of the fastest search engines, and the best part of this software is that it offers shortcuts and has powerful plugin API that is highly customizable. Its full features are accessible only after paying a certain amount, but you can use it for free for unlimited time.
Get this text editor for Mac free download from the site
6. Atom
Atom as a text editor for Mac is new in the market but is very much capable of doing your coding job. It is open source software that is available for free and is maintained by Github. It comes with massive user submitted package library and its impressive features are file system browser, fuzzy search, multiple tabs for editing, code folding, and multi-selection for quick edits, It also supports extension library, four UI and eight syntax themes in both dark and light colors. Apart from this it is also considered as the best text editor for Mac python.
Download this tool for free.
7. Textastic – Best Coding Text Editor
Another cross-platform text editor for Mac users is Textastic. It has made the coding easy job not only on Mac but also on iPhone and iPad. A unique feature of this tool is cloud syncing. If you are doing your coding work on Mac and want to switch to your iPhone or iPad then carry on from where you left without any effort. Therefore it is an excellent tool for on the go edits and quick in functionality. It is a versatile tool that supports almost 80 coding and markup language. Thus it is one of the 10 best text editors for Mac coding.
Get this out of box tool from the link given
8. Ultra Edit
The name Ultra Edit is a lot famous among developers from so many years and comes from IDM Computer Solutions. The main strength or USP of this tool lies in their editing capability. It supports HTML, PHP, Javascript, C/C++, Perl, Python and bundle of programming languages. With this tool comes features like features syntax highlighting, column/block editing, file/data sorting etc. It has integrated FTP client as well as SSH/telnet support. Most of its features are accessible with its premium offer but is a tool that is worth a buck.
9. Code Runner 2
It is another hardcore coding or text editor tool that you will love to use for prose writing. This tool unlike others supports themes that come from textmate and has ample of customizing options. Its attractive features that make programming job easy include symbol navigation, auto complete for words and bracket matching. In addition you get argument execution with input sets, an interactive console, and much more.
Want to use this versatile tool get it now
10. MacVim
Well, the list comes to an end with another famous 10 best text editors for Mac OS X. This text editor is free with primitive interface. This unique software is packed with standard OS X keyboard shortcuts lessening the learning curve a little. With this tool you get transparent backgrounds and full screen mode for distraction-free coding. It comes along with tabs and multiple windows with a fully-loaded ODB editor.
Want to try now and wait no more
Conclusion
So these were some of the most versatile, top selected and the top text editors for Mac. They will make your machine more useful. These are our best picks and are highly recommended 10 best text editors for Mac. One must give a try for they are build to serve the purpose of programming, coding and web designing. Hope this will make your search easy and sorted,
I searched for this and found Maudite's question about text editors but they were all for Windows.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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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)