For web-based, browser-based, editors, see our Web-Related area.
Go-to Editor, Preferences over the Decades
- Emacs, GNU Emacs – was go-to editor for more than a decade, more CLI/terminals
- (Never been a big fan of vi but of course also using that ever so often.)
- TextWrangler has been go-to editor on IM27s, IM2710, IM2711, and IM2713
- And ALSO on 10.13 High Sierra, even if Bare Bones’ product say it’s not working (not sure what – if anything – isn’t working)
- TextWrangler IS a 32-bit – only app so it does NOT work on 10.15 Catalina
- In 2020, did a revisit of editor market, re-evaluated many editors and their latest versions, and in the end currently is focusing on using MS Visual Studio Code. *I* like:
- the general layout
- good look and feel also on macOS
- at least decent handling of languages I currently focus on / want to see support for- C, C++, CSS, CoffeScript, diff, Docker, HTML, ini, JSON, w/ comments, Java, JavaScript, Less, Log, Makefile, Objective-C, Objective-C++, PHP, Perl, Perl 6, Python, R, SCSS, SQL, Swift, TypeScript, XML, XSL, and YAML.
- (For also many years, also using Eclipse IDE also for occasional stand-alone text edit activities. But, for stand-alone text editing in general, that is a major overkill…… It IS an IDE, not ‘just’ an editor!)
List of Editors
Cost | Top5 Jan’20 [1] |
Top12 Feb’20 [2] |
Top10 Apr’20 [3] |
10free Oct’20 [4] |
|||
Atom | FOSS | atom.io | 5 | 2 | 2 | 6 | |
BBEdit 13 | 0/$$$ | barebones.com/products/bbedit barebones.com/products/bbedit/comparison.html |
– | 4 | 9 | ||
Brackets | FOSS | brackets.io | 2 | 3 | 5 | 1 | |
Coda 2 / Nova | $$ | panic.com/coda | – | 6 | 6 | ||
CodeRunner 2 | $15 | coderunnerapp.com | – | 10 | |||
Espresso | $80 | espressoapp.com | – | 11 | 4 | ||
GNU Emacs | Free | 8 | |||||
Komodo Edit | FOSS | activestate.com/products/komodo-ide | 3 | 4 | |||
Notepad++ | DKDC | WINDOWS-ONLY | – | – | 7 | ||
Sublime Text | $80 | sublimetext.com | 4 | 1 | 1 | 5 | |
Textastic | $8 | apps.apple.com/… | – | 8 | |||
TextMate 2.0 | $56 | macromates.com | – | 9 | 7 | ||
TextWrangler | Free | ### | 2 | ||||
UltraEdit | $$$ | ultraedit.de | 1 | 5 | 10 | 10 | |
Vim | FOSS | vim.org | – | 12 | 8 | 3 | |
Visual Studio Code | Free | code.visualstudio.com | – | 7 | 3 | 9 |
- [1] Top5 Jan’20: cleverfiles.com/howto/top-5-text-editors-mac.html
- [2] Top12 Feb’20: beebom.com/best-text-editors-for-mac/
- [3] Top10 Apr’20 techradar.com/best/best-text-editors
- [4] (2020-09-19) ’10 Best Free Text Editors for macOS 10.14′, pdf.wondershare.com/…
- google.com/search?q=text+editor+mac
- google.com/search?q=text+editor+mac+free
- wikipedia: Comparison of text editors