A good text editor is essential whether you’re a seasoned programmer or a coding newbie. Mac devices are considered the ideal platform for high-performance coding due to their powerful hardware configuration. They do not, however, come with robust code or text editors.
Fortunately, there are several decent text editor software that you can use to write development codes in your preferred language on your Mac. Choosing the best text editor can be a difficult one due to so many choices in the market. To simplify this task, we have compiled a list of the best Mac text editor software.
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11 Best Free Mac Text Editor
Sublime Text
Sublime Text is one of the most famous text editors for Mac. It is a fast and reliable software that requires little disk space and system resources. This software offers many features, including syntax highlighting and folding, a simple interface, multiple selections, high customizability, and a powerful API and package ecosystem.
Sublime Text’s improved API also has plugin integration, and there are several keyboard shortcuts for quick variable selection. One of its best features is “Goto Anything,” which enables you to quickly jump to symbols, lines, and words that you are looking for.
Further, tools for split editing, Goto definition, batch editing, Command Palette, and instant project switch make Sublime Text the best Mac text editor. You can use the free trial or opt for the full version at a one-time payment of $99.
Atom
One of the best Mac text editors out there is Atom. This open-source software is modern and approachable while still being hackable to its core. It has a package manager that provides access to various tools and extensions created by its users and developers.
The text editor has been built on HTML, JavaScript, Node.jss, and Code integration and runs on Electron. Atom is highly customizable, and you can choose from thousands of open-source packages to install for new features and functionality.
It even lets you make changes to the UI with CSS or add features with HTML and JavaScript to complement your workflow. Therefore, Atom is the best free Mac text editor software.
BBEdit 14
BBEdit is an old and reliable Mac text editor. It is used by thousands of developers and writers due to its features for editing, searching, prose manipulation, textual data, and source code. BBEdit further has placeholder options for site maintenance, customizable syntax coloring support, hard wrap, multiple file manipulations, and a complete set of HTML tools for fast and correct markup.
It has an intuitive and straightforward interface that helps you quickly find and replace regular expressions. The text editor supports several programming languages, such as HTML, CSS, Python, JavaScript, Ruby, PHP, C++, and others. BBEdit offers a free trial as well as a paid single-user license for $49.99.
Brackets
Another popular text editor for Mac is Brackets. It mainly focuses on web design and is, therefore, a better choice for front-end developers. Brackets is a free Mac text editor developed as an open-source project supported by its active community.
Its most famous feature is Live Preview, which enables users to see any changes they make to the CSS or HTML of the code live in a Chrome window. This helps developers keep an eye on the code and avoid drastic mistakes.
Brackets is an Adobe product and, hence, works exceptionally well with other Adobe products. Its Extract feature helps users automatically extract color, font, gradient, and information about measurement from any Photoshop document. You can also use Brackets extensions to add more features to the text editor.
UltraEdit
If you’re looking for the best Mac text editor, look no further than UltraEdit. This text editing software has been around for ages and supports several different languages like C, Objective C, XML, Javascript, PHP, Python, Perl, and others. It has many other features for theme support, multi-caret editing, support for large files, syntax highlighting for multiple languages, integrated FTP, etc.
UltraEdit’s strength lies in its flexibility, speed, and security. It is reliable and regularly updated, and you only need to purchase one license to install it simultaneously on Windows, Mac, and Linux computers. On the flip side, it is one of the most expensive text editors, charging $99.95 per year as a license fee.
Nova/Coda 2
Nova/Coda 2 is an all-in-one text editor for Mac. It is a fast and flexible software with multiple cursors, smart autocomplete, and tag pairs. The editor also offers features like syntax highlighting for different languages, project-wide autocomplete, indentation guides, code folding, automatic tag closing, and more.
Coda has one of the best integrated file systems, and you can open local files or edit them remotely on FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, and Amazon S3 servers with it. You can even create a high-level view of the whole source code with the Minimap function.
Coda supports around 26 coding languages and offers a built-in debugger for Python, Chrome, PHP, Deno, and Node.js. You can include support for more languages via the extension browser and API.
Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code is a free and open-source text editor developed by Microsoft. Its features have been optimized to ensure compatibility with Mac so that there is no difference in performance on Windows and non-Windows devices. It is the best text editor for working on the same project from different devices.
Visual Studio Code’s main feature is IntelliSense, which offers auto-completed smart code based on imported modules, variable types, and function definitions. It also has a lightning-fast source-code editor, syntax highlighting for over 30 languages, automatic real-time API description, and Git control.
The text editor has an integrated terminal that enables developers to run commands and scripts directly within the IDE. It has an extensive extension library that you can use to enhance its features and customize the interface.
TextMate
TextMate is an exclusive and one of the best Mac text editors. It strikes a balance between advanced functionality and an intuitive interface such that both experts and novices can use it. The primary features here include the ability to research and replace project codes, bracket auto-pairing, column selection and typing, and more.
Further, TextMate offers multiple carets feature for more than one active cursor and selection range. The deep project search facilitates preview replacements, exact matches, and jump between matches. It comes with an advanced version control system and is, therefore, perfect for those who want a no-nonsense text editor.
Setapp CodeRunner
CodeRunner is a lightweight and affordable text editor and IDE(integrated development environment) for MacOS. It is a multi-language programming tool that supports 25 languages and has easy customization options to run additional languages.
The Setapp editor further has over 200 syntax nodes and advanced editing features that can be used to edit all types of text files. All levels of programmers can easily execute codes on it. CodeRunner has integrated debugging tools to help users set breakpoints and navigate through their system.
It also offers smart code completion that can be a big time-saver while writing functions and variables. The information sidebar can be used to quickly look up functions, methods, classes, and symbols.
Espresso
Espresso is the most attractive and intuitive Mac text editor out there. It provides a simple and easy-going text editing experience thanks to its segregated columns for code editor, navigator, and files. This makes it easier to keep track of the different sections of the code you are working on.
Espresso is the best text editor from a productivity perspective and a game-changer for real-time text editing.
Vim
Vim is another popular free text editor for Mac. It often comes pre-installed on MacOS devices and supports 20+ programming languages, such as HTML, Python, PHP, C++, Ruby, and Java. This editor does not have the most attractive user interface, but it comes with a set of tools that come in handy while coding.
Vim has a solid collection of keyboard shortcuts and a massive command set consisting of a set compiler, automatic correction, automatic syntax, and an error list. You can also use its advanced keyboard inputs to type, edit, and manage quotes faster without a mouse.
