What is the best alternative to Visual Studio Emulator for Android?

Question

Built By the Slant team

Find the best product instantly.

4.7 star rating

Try it now - it's free

score 8 · Answer 1

sublimious

Top Pro

Pre-configured with layers

Whenever you need to work on a new language that you don't have plugins for yet, you can choose to check if sublimious has a layer for that language. If it does, all you need to do is activate it and sublimious will automatically download all plugins you need for that language, add keybindings for efficient usage and set the optimal settings for these plugins. See More

Top Pro

VIM centric

This plugin is perfect for VIM fanatics. It tries to add VIM keybindings to everything, even to where you didn't know it was possible like the sublime text overlay or the sidebar See More

Top Pro

Ergonomic shortcuts

sublimious adds shortcuts that actually make sense. "p f" for example searches files in the current project. "g s" executes "git status" and so on, you get the idea. It even comes with a helper that shows you what shortcuts are available. See More

8 0

score 67 · Answer 2

PrimeOS

Top Pro

Dual boot at single click with PrimeOS installer

Top Con

Windows software aren't compatible

Top Pro

Standalone OS, better performance than any emulator

PrimeOS is standalone OS thus provides 2x performance than any emulator as emulator runs on a host OS. See More

Top Pro

3x better performance than windows budget laptop

Top Pro

Android Gaming on PC

PrimeOS is equipped with a key mapping tool, DecaPro whihc let you play any Android game at the comfort of keyboard and mouse. See More

Top Pro

Android Ecosystem with Desktop Interface

PrimeOS provides access to the whole Android ecosystem with complete desktop interface. Now use multiple apps on single screen with minimise, maximise and close option. See More

Specs

Based On:Android

Default Desktop Environment:PrimeOS Desktop

Origin:India

Release Schedule:Point

See All Specs

See All Experiences

67 4

score 43 · Answer 3

Textadept

Top Pro

Has both GUI and TUI

Both text and GUI versions behave mostly the same, just the way notepad users would expect it to. Like shift+arrows - select, Ctrl+c - copy, Ctrl+o - open a file. See More

Top Con

Community

Does not have an IRC channel or some kind of forum where a community of developers/plugin writers could evolve around. Has a mailing list which is said to be active but that does not feel that attractive. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

It's available for Windows, Mac and Linux. See More

Top Pro

Easily written plugins

You can write plugins pretty easily. Here is the API doc, quite compact. Here is a module which adds a support for ctags. See More

Top Pro

Small and portable

Has very few dependencies, and very small footprint. Can be copied to a new system in a moment, unpacked and be at your service. See More

Top Pro

Scriptable

Has a built-in lua engine. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux, BSD

See All Experiences

43 3

score 21 · Answer 4

Droid4X

Top Con

Win 10 sleep mode issues

Coming out of Windows 10 sleep mode tends to lockup this emulator. Restarting the emulator seems to be the only option (emulator appears to still be running, but the Android OS is frozen - apps/icons, menu's, google store, etc. ) See More

Top Pro

Can run dual operating systems smoothly

Flip easily between Windows an Android OS with ease and no performance degradation. See More

Top Con

Windows Only

Top Pro

Install apps 3 ways

Drag and drop to install or use the apps store or run .apk apps directly to install. See More

Top Con

Custom "Recommand" tab screen from homepage is useless

Gives error "The Contents is not provided in you region". See More

Top Pro

GPS simulation

Top Con

Gyro sensing not working

Top Pro

Remote controller options

Use your smart phone to remotely control your Droid4X games (or customize your keyboard)! See More

Top Con

Pressing the Home/Back/Task-List icons may cause some lag for the emulator

Top Pro

Touch screen support

Very responsive touchscreen for great game play. See More

Top Con

The default home screen is not customizable

Top Pro

Free

Top Con

Buttons on the auto-hide navigation bar are too small

Top Pro

Great integration with Windows + tablets

Allows for hard or virtual (screen) keyboards, customize RAM and CPU's used, window size or full screen, swipe between Windows 10 and Droid4X, and allows for 1 folder share (local or LAN) as SD See More

Top Con

No widget support

Top Pro

Amazing graphics

Graphics are exceptional (high end games as well as low end). See More

Top Con

Native screen auto-rotation is only for 180, no 90/-90 except for some inplay games.

Top Con

Latest version used is Android 4.2.2

See All Experiences

21 2

score 83 · Answer 5

Kakoune

Top Pro

Will be familiar to vim users

Kakoune first started as a rewrite from scratch of vim, but then ended up being another text editor altogether. So it's inspired in a lot of ways from vim. See More

Top Con

Small community

Top Pro

More modern than vim

Top Con

No real Windows support

Will compile under CygWin. See More

Top Pro

Good UNIX citizen

It follows the UNIX philosophy by doing one thing well (text editing) and interfaces nicely with other CLI tools. See More

Top Con

Default bindings do not play nice with OS X (Alt+???)

Top Pro

Text selection mechanism

Kakoune works on selections, which are oriented, inclusive range of characters, selections have an anchor and a cursor character. Most commands move both of them, except when extending selection where the anchor character stays fixed and the cursor one moves around. See More

Top Con

Written in C++

Top Pro

Very expressive

Kakoune provides a very expressive set of commands, including various objects selection (paragraph, blocks, words), alignment support, conditional selection filtering... This set of command is expressive enough to implement all the provided auto indentation logic. See More

Top Pro

Actively developed and supported

Top Pro

Self-documenting

A helper pops up when typing commands. See More

Top Pro

Simpler and more consistent than Vim

Some keys select, other keys operate on the selections. Shift is used to extend the selection, alt is used for alternative behavior, e.g. reverse the search direction. No inconsistencies like Y which means yy and not y$ in Vim. See More

Specs

Platforms:Linux, macOS, Android

License:Unlicense

See All Experiences

83 7

score 2 · Answer 6

neovim-gtk

Top Pro

Full GTK3 integration

The UI is fully GTK3 compatable, so it themes to match your desktop and the functions are all in expected locations. See More

Top Pro

Light UI stays out of the way but does provide all expected widgets

The overall UI is very trim and doesn't take up screen space for no reason, but all the expected bits like tabs and popups and even the command line have native widgets. See More

Top Pro

Support for ligatures

Fonts with ligatures can be used to render code. See More

2 0

score 44 · Answer 7

Official Android SDK Emulator w/HAXM

Top Pro

Can simulate complex network environments

Each running instance of the emulator has a separate virtual router allowing complex simulations and setups. Network speed and delay can be simulated either by using presets for various network formats or manually entering desired values. It's even possible to interconnect one AVD to another AVD. See More

Top Con

Setting up the whole environment is a hassle

Top Pro

GPS emulation support

Longitute, latitude and altitude information can be supplied to the device once it's running. NMEA 1083 formatting is optional. See More

Top Con

No Bluetooth support

Top Pro

Allows sending an SMS to the virtual device

You can send an SMS using the command sms send <senderPhoneNumber> <textmessage> See More

Top Con

Can't place actual phone calls

While simulated phone calls can be placed and received, there's no call audio support. See More

Top Pro

SD card emulation support

A disk image can be loaded into the emulator on startup to act as an SD card. This can be done via AVD Manager or mksdcard utility. While the SD card cannot be removed from a running emulator, files can still be moved, copied to and from, and removed from the card. The SD card can be of any size up to 128GB. See More

Top Con

Bad OS X support

Top Pro

GSM emulated modem allows telephony emulation

Telephony emulation allows simulating incoming calls as well as establishing and terminating data connections. Calls can be accepted, but there's no support for call audio. See More

Top Con

Clunky UI around things like GPS and such

Top Pro

The virtual device is capable of recording and playing back audio

Top Pro

Accelerometer support

Top Pro

Flexible interface

Top Pro

Works on Windows/Mac/Linux

Top Pro

Libre/Open source

Top Pro

Various power characteristics can be emulated

Via the power command, AC charging state as well as battery state, presence, health and capacity can be changed. See More

Top Pro

LCD density can be abstracted

Top Pro

Camera support

See All Experiences

44 6

score 602 · Answer 8

Spacemacs

Top Pro

Combines the best parts of Vi and Emacs

Spacemacs combines the Emacs platform (with the full power of the Emacs plugin ecosystem) and the Vi keybindings (via EViL), all in the same box. See More

Top Con

Can be quite glitchy at times

Spacemacs combines many packages from many different authors that were never designed to work together. Sometimes they interact in unexpected ways, and things randomly break as one package interferes with another's features. This combined with frequent package updates and necessary customization by selection of layers and packages, can make these glitches hard to reproduce. It takes a lot of emacs know-how to fix these problems. Fortunately there is a very active community willing to help with these problems, but it might take a while. See More

Top Pro

Simple but powerful configuration architecture

At the heart of Spacemacs, the configuration layers group packages configuration into semantic units that can be toggled on and off. The architecture is simple but powerful, allowing the user to easily manage configuration dependencies between hundreds of packages. See More

Top Con

Complex learning difficulty

You must be familiar with either Vim or Emacs. In addition, you should be familiar with the unique features of Spacemacs. The Layer concept of replacing Emacs settings is still difficult and abstract compared to modern editors. See More

Top Pro

Community-driven configuration

Spacemacs is the biggest community-driven Emacs starter-kit. See More

Top Con

Functionality layers of complicated configuration

To configure Spacemacs, settings for Emacs/Evil/Spacemacs may need editing. It's not always clear which need to be changed or how to change settings globally: sometimes hooks are needed, other times Spacemacs provides options. See More

Top Pro

Above average documentation quality

Documentation is mandatory for each new configuration layer and can be accessed directly within the editor in Org format. See More

Top Con

High CPU and unresponsive at times

There are occasions when Spacemacs would suddenly consume a LOT of CPU and then other times would become completely unresponsive. This instability took place only 6 months or so ago. Restarting Spacemacs can fix it for a while but perhaps this issue is already fixed in newer versions. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Emacs runs on Gnu/Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. See More

Top Con

Relative low startup time

Although configuration is heavily loaded, the starting time of Spacemacs is usually between two and five seconds. Emacs can be run as a daemon though which reduces the client's startup time to a few milliseconds. Still not as bad as other editors though, especially Electron based ones like VSCode or Atom. See More

Top Pro

Completely configured out of the box

Stuff like version control, file management, good default theme are all configured out of the box. See More

Top Pro

Mnemonic and consistent keybindings

Space-lead key bindings are organized in mnemonic namespaces. For instance, buffer actions are under SPC b, file actions are under SPC f, project actions are under SPC p, search actions are under SPC s, and so on. Keybindings are consistent across the whole distribution thanks to a set of conventions. See More

Top Pro

Can be controlled fully with the keyboard

There's no need to reach for the mouse again since Spacemacs can be fully controlled with keyboard. See More

Top Pro

Gradual learning curve

Evil package is a first class citizen and Spacemacs embraces it from day one. Evil package allows Vim users to be productive very quickly while still allowing regular Emacs users to use Spacemacs. See More

Top Pro

Remote file editing

Files can be edited in Spacemacs remotely. See More

Top Pro

Great note-taking and agenda mode built-in

Allows for great organization applications that can be saved in future-proof format, plain text, can be integrated with org, LaTeX, markdown, HTML, Literate Programming and be committed to source control. See More

Top Pro

Offers a number of practical features

Spacemacs has some great features for taking notes, tracking to-do lists, and tracking time. See More

Top Pro

LaTeX support

LaTeX allows for auto-completion, syncing, and more. See More

Top Pro

Manage many code bases easily

Top Pro

Daemon support

Has great daemon support, which can mitigate the issue of slow startup. See More

Top Pro

Can work in terminal mode

Sometimes you only have terminal access, over ssh or something. See More

Top Pro

Great CFEngine support

Syntax highlighting and org-babel extensions. See More

Top Pro

Great support from the community

The community surrounding Spacemacs is very active and there is a welcoming gitter chat for users to ask questions. See More

Top Pro

Lowers the risk of RSI by using the spacebar as leader

Spacemacs got its name from the fact that it is uses the space bar as a default leader key. The key was chosen because it is easy to press and to hopefully lower the risk of RSI. See More

Top Pro

Fast-paced development

New functionalities and fixes are added to Spacemacs every day, while release cycles are short. See More

Top Pro

Easily extended with community plugins

Top Pro

Works well with Common Lisp

Top Pro

Manage R files easily

Top Pro

Great Clojure support

Top Pro

Excellent support for Elixir programming language

Elixir layer which uses the Alchemist package is the best way to edit Elixir code out there. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux, BSD

License:GPL-3.0-or-later

See All Experiences

602 74

score 24 · Answer 9

Yi

Top Pro

Combines and improves upon the best text-editing features from your favorite editors

Yi has default configurations for Vim, Emacs, as well as CUA. It also makes several improvements that includes Sublime-like (multiple) cursors. See More

Top Con

Very few plugins available

Even though Yi is a general purpose text editor similar to Vim and Emacs, almost all of the plugins that have been written for Yi so far focus on supporting Haskell as a programming environment. See More

Top Pro

More performant than Vim

Vim can be rather slow due the age of its code base. In particular, running large macros in Vim can be rather painful. Since Yi is being built from scratch it has been engineered for performance and with the benefit of hindsight. See More

Top Con

No way to reuse your existing customizations and keybindings

If you have spent years crafting your .vimrc or .emacs, there's no way to reuse it in Yi. You have to start from scratch. See More

Top Pro

Extensible and modular editing features

As far as extensibility goes, Yi easily outstrips any other open-source text editor. Motions can be built from parser combinators, making them simultaneously flexible and modular - an open source hacker's dream. See More

Top Con

Requires Haskell to compile and configure

GHC + Haskell packages makes for a rather large installation, which is a big ask for a relatively obscure terminal editor. See More

Top Pro

Plugins work together

Packages work together because they compile together. See More

See All Experiences

24 6

score 52 · Answer 10

Anbox

Top Con

Limited Linux Distribution

Only works on Ubuntu & debian don't Support Fedora/CentOs. See More

Top Pro

Fast

Its fast since there is no emulation layer. See More

Top Con

Linux only

Works only on linux since it uses the Systems Linux kernel instead of the Android Linux kernel. See More

52 12

score 598 · Answer 11

Neovim

Top Pro

Still Vim but with upgraded features and some issues fixed

NeoVim was a complete rewrite of Vim, with new features added and underlying issues resolved thanks to the Vim code base. The keybindings and configuration are the same as Vim, so the switch can be pretty simple. See More

Top Con

Poor feature discoverability

Top Pro

Better integration with external tools

The core text editor is "headless", meaning it's detached from the user-interface so other programs can hook into it. This enables better integration with IDEs and browsers, where "Vim mode" has typically been a poor substitute because it was a partial rewrite or a partial port at best. One of the advantages of Vim has always been ubiquity and Neovim makes it even more ubiquitous. See More

Top Con

High effort to customize

A lot of time and effort is put in to make it specific to your needs. See More

Top Pro

Powerful plugin model

Vim plugins have always been useful, but tied to specific languages. Neovim's architecture provides better separation between plugins and the core product, so that plugins are completely flexible and can be written in any language. See More

Top Con

Requires Brain Mode Switching

When editing in vim, you have you use the vim keys; when editing in every other window on your PC, or in Word or Excel or other application, you need to use the standard system key combinations. Learning the vim combinations can actually make you SLOWER at everything else. See More

Top Pro

Built-in terminal emulator

This avoids the user having to make any installations. See More

Top Con

Consume brain energy for editing that should be used for logic

Text editing in vim can be great once you've learned it, but it requires thinking about combination of commands. In other editors, you don't have to think about how to delete this part of code. You just think about how to implement a feature, what is a good design for this code. Even after you get used to using vim, it still requires your brain for editing. See More

Top Pro

UI Agnostic

The core functionality is handled apart from the UI, meaning that Neovim can be embedded into any other GUI system, such as Atom. See More

Top Con

Ambiguity in extensive documentation

Top Pro

Async plugin execution

Top Con

Limited cross platform support

Neovim is not available for many legacy platforms See More

Top Pro

Active development community

Top Con

Split the VIM community

Moolenaar to be blamed for. If he opened up the development for vim to other bright minds, no fork would have happened. As it is mostly compatible with vim, it is not such a big issue. See More

Top Pro

Opens a 3Gig Text File in a few seconds

Not many editors can open such a large text file so quickly. See More

Top Con

Poor support for external tooling

Top Pro

Fast and light on memory usage

New neovim editor instance starts instantly and you can have multiple editors open at the same time, because id does not require a lot of memory to run. See More

Top Pro

Easier to pick-up than ever

Don't believe it? Try typing vimtutor in your command line right now. See More

Top Pro

Work in TUI (Text User Interface)

Neovim can work on terminal, on a remote server over ssh. See More

Top Pro

Modern code base

As a refactor over Vim, Neovim has greatly improved its code base. For example, some functionality is handled by libuv, the same code base that powers Node.js. See More

Top Pro

Comes with some good configurations out of the box

Some typical configurations most of VIM users make are default in Neovim. See More

Top Pro

Even more powerful since 2019, because of additions such as vim-coc, TabNine, fzf, skim

Vim gets stronger every time command-line tools get stronger. This isn't even it's the final form. See More

Top Pro

Config file is where it should be

I don't like having dotfiles or dotdirs in my homefolder unless they're needed. Configs should be in the .config dir in their respective folder. See More

Top Pro

Built-in file-explorer and ability to make splits and edit multiple things simutaneously.

This makes editing multiple files at once, moving code around so easy. See More

Top Pro

Treesitter and LSP

Top Pro

Terminal mode is very convenient for testing code in a split window

Specs

Platforms:Linux, Windows, macOS, *nix, Android

598 90

score 190 · Answer 12

Genymotion

Top Pro

Faster than most Android devices

Genymotion takes advantage of OpenGL capable graphics cards allowing it to be one of the fastest Android emulators. The only comparable option is HAXM enabled Android SDK emulator. See More

Top Con

Expensive

Top Pro

Can be integrated with Eclipse and Android Studio

Genymotion has plugins for Eclipse and Android Studio allowing you to launch Genymotion right from within those IDEs. See More

Top Con

Signup required for download

Before downloading Genymotion, users must create an account. And even if you download from an alternative mirror, bypassing signup, you need to register and login in the application itself before using it. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Genymotion is available on Windows, OS X and Linux See More

Top Con

Can't set a custom display resolution

For example: it's impossible to run it in full screen on a full HD monitor. See More

Top Pro

A webcam and a dummy webcam can be used with the emulated device

Genymotion allows using a webcam connected to a computer as a camera for the emulated device. It can also enable a dummy webcam that will display a genymotion logo in motion. To use a webcam or set up a dummy, access camera settings panel by pressing ctrl+3 (or ⌘+3), enable the functionality and choose a front-facing and a back-facing camera. See More

Top Con

Can't run inside a virtual machine

Genymotion can't run inside a virtual machine, because virtualbox can't pass on OpenGL support. See More

Top Pro

Large library of emulated devices as well as custom devices

Genymotion has a selection of over 20 virtual devices, including various Google, HTC, LG, Motorola, Samsung and Sony phones and tablets. If a device that's needed is not found in the library, a custom phone or tablet device can be created with RAM, screen size and density adjusted from the wrench menu. See More

Top Con

Doesn't come with gapps installed

Top Pro

Multiple ways of installing an application including drag & drop

Genymotion offers three ways of deploying an app: By dragging and dropping an .apk file on a device (ADB must be installed) By running adb install <appname>.apk By using a web link from within the emulated device See More

Top Con

No OpenGL support; needed to edit BIOS

Top Pro

GPS Widget

GPS information, including position, accuracy and bearing, can be used and modified in real time. Ctrl+2 (or ⌘+2) to access GPS settings panel. See More

Top Con

Audio is badly distorted with any settings

Using a simple HDMI output to AVR (NVIDIA card HDMI, base setup) the audio is stuttering and badly distorted. I've played with every combination of the settings, the only change was nosound at all with other than the AC97 audio controller (Intel HD, Soundblaster). Genymotion launcher does not have ANY settings for audio, you have to configure it in Oracle Virtualbox settings. See More

Top Pro

Simple setup

Installation is standard and after installing and launching Genymotion you'll have to log in. Once signed in, you can create your virtualized Android device. See More

Top Con

Uses Virtualbox separately, configuration is annoying

It is bundled with Virtualbox is the meaning of it's also downloaded. During the install, you have to separately install Virtualbox and manage it after, meaning uninstalling manually when Genymotion is already uninstalled. The separate install causes ridiculous setup process, where yoiu have to set properties in the Genymotion launcher AND the Oracle Virtualbox launcher, too. Very awkward. See More

Top Pro

Comes bundled with Virtual Box

Genymotion runs on Oracle Virtual Box, that is bundled with the installation. See More

Top Con

Free version is for non-commercial work only

Top Pro

Allows creating shared folders between host and VM

In order to enable the functionality: Go to your VirtualBox VM setting / Shared folder tab Add a shared folder with the folder you want to shared, and check the "auto mount" option Start your VM as usual from the Genymotion software Your shared folder is available in the /mnt/shared directory (multiple shared folders are supported) See More

Top Con

No way to install your applications directly from Titanium Studio before version 3.2

With an app's apk it's possible to simply drag & drop it on a running device to install and launch the app. See More

Top Pro

Emulates every Android version starting with Jelly Bean and later

Genymotion supports Android 2.3, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 and 4.4 emulation. See More

Top Con

Accelerometer and gyroscope is not yet emulated

Although accelerometer and gyroscope is not yet emulated, accelerometer data from a physical device can be used with the remote control widget. See More

Top Pro

Free version available

A free version is offered to use it with general functionality non-commercially. See More

Top Con

Proprietary

Top Pro

Enterprise Grade Android Emulator

Genymotion is a true enterprise grade Android Emulator and a very close competitor to Bluestacks in terms of features and apps compatibility. One of the key differences between Bluestacks and Genymotion is the target users. Genymotion majorly targets app developers while Bluestacks primarily targets app users and gamers. See More

Top Pro

Allows setting a custom Android or device ID (paid)

A custom or random Android ID & Device ID / IMEI / MEID can be set up from the Identifiers pane that can be accessed by clicking ctrl+6 (or ⌘+6). Since IMEI and MEID are often used as device IDs, Genymotion generates number compliant with the GSM 02.16 standard. See More

Top Pro

Easy device duplication and reset (paid)

A virtual device can be cloned and reset to factory settings quickly. See More

Top Pro

Can simulate multitouch interactions

Multitouch commands can be issued via mouse and keyboard. See More

Top Pro

Allows controlling an emulated device with a physical device (paid)

Remote control widget allows taking control of an emulated device via a physical one. It forwards multitouch gesture and accelerometer information to the virtual device. See More

Top Pro

Allows capturing screenshots and videos (paid)

To capture a video or a screenshot, access capture widget by clicking ctrl+4 (or ⌘+4) and clicking either screenshot or screencast. This is especially useful for older device images (before 4.4) where there's no native way of recording. See More

Top Pro

A pixel emulated takes exactly one pixel on monitor (paid)

Each pixel can be set to display using exactly one pixel of your monitor. To enable this functionality click ctrl+r (or ⌘+r). See More

Top Pro

Network quality emulation (paid)

Genymotion offers multiple network profiles - Wifi, edge, 3G, 4G. Network quality (various delays and packet loss) can be controlled via UI (accessed by clicking ctrl+7 or ⌘+7), Java API or command line. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac

See All Experiences

190 43

score 15 · Answer 13

ARC Welder

Top Pro

Developed by Google

Even though it's a developer preview, it's likely to evolve quickly as Google is developing it. Since Google is also behind Android, it makes sense to use a more official way of running APK. If they don't work, you may check with the developer so it may eventually work. See More

Top Con

Discontinued

Discontinued after December 2020. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Works on Chrome 41+ on Windows, Mac, Chrome OS and Linux. See More

Top Con

Not all Google Play services are yet supported

ARC Welder supports OAuth2, Google Cloud Messaging , Google+ sign-in, Maps, Location, and Ads APIs from Google Play services. See More

Top Pro

Allows running apps in a Chrome web browser

It installs as a Chrome App and runs on most operating systems (Windows, Mac, Linux, Chrome OS), even thought x86 support will be put in maintenance mode soon. See More

Top Con

Only supports "arm" apk files

"x86" apk files don't work as of 20150422. See More

Top Con

Keyboard input is spotty

Top Con

No accelerometer emulation

Top Con

Orientation mode has to be selected before running the app

Top Con

A single app can be loaded at a time

See All Experiences

15 5

score 65 · Answer 14

nano

Top Pro

Easy to use

Nano includes only the bare minimum of functionality needed to edit documents making it very simple. See More

Top Con

Limited feature set

While nano is fine for writing blog posts or doing quick modifications, it's probably not suitable for programmers or someone who needs to work on an editor for an extensive period of time. See More

Top Pro

Built-in cheat sheet for shortcuts

Shortcuts for common commands are shown at the bottom of the editor. See More

Top Con

Uncommon keybindings

Nano uses a strange set of default keybindings, which is totally different than Vim, Emacs, VSCode and Sublime. See More

Top Pro

Available on almost every Linux system as default

Similar to vi (vim), you can find nano on most Unix-like systems (even on Cygwin). See More

Top Pro

Most of the languages supported

Syntax coloring is available for most of the programming language. See More

Top Pro

Lightweight and bug free

Very stable editor that never hangs / leaks or crashes. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux, Cygwin

License:GPL-3.0-only

See All Experiences

65 18

score 846 · Answer 15

Emacs

Top Pro

Keyboard-focused, mouse-free editing

Emacs can be controlled entirely with the keyboard. While true, I often find the mouse and menus handy for those lesser-used commands. An aide-memoir. See More

Top Con

Learning curve is long

While it's better than it used to be, with most functions being possible through the menu, Emacs is still quite a bit different from your standard editor. You'll need to learn new keyboard shortcuts. See More

Top Pro

Total customizability

Customizations can be made to a wide range of Emacs' functions through a Lisp dialect (Emacs Lisp). A robust list of existing Lisp extensions include the practical (git integration, syntax highlighting, etc) to the utilitarian (calculators, calendars) to the sublime (chess, Eliza). See More

Top Con

Sometimes the extensibility can distract you from your actual work

If I ever want to lose half a day, I'll start by tweaking my .spacemacs config file. See More

Top Pro

It's also an IDE

You can debug, compile, manage files, integrate with version control systems, etc. All through the various plugins that can be installed. See More

Top Con

Keyboard combinations can be confusing for new users

For example, for navigation it uses the b, n, p, l keys. Which for some people may seem strange in the begging. However they can be changed easily. See More

Top Pro

Works in terminal or as a GUI application

You can use Emacs' command line interface or graphical user interface. See More

Top Con

Documentation is not beginner-friendly

Although lots of good built-in documentation _exists_, I have after four years of Emacs as my primary editor not figured out how to actually make use of it, and rely completely on Google / StackOverflow for help. See More

Top Pro

Self documenting

Emacs has extensive help support built-in as well as a tutorial accessed with C-h t. See More

Top Con

User interface is terrible

I was using Emacs in the early 1980's, before there were GUIs. In fairness to Emacs, its original design was conceived in that context and is rather good at some things, like flexible ability to bind commands to keyboard shortcuts. Unfortunately, it didn't keep up with the times and fails to take advantage of the entire world of GUI design that's revolutionized computer science since then. So Emacs does 5% or what an editor should do quite will, and is surprisingly under-powered and old fashioned at the other 95%. To this day, it lacks or struggles with very basic things, like interactive dialogs, toolbars, tabbed interface, file system navigation, etc., etc. The things I just mentioned, are all present in some limited and inept form, but falls far short of current standard of good user interface design. For this reason, I would not recommend Emacs to anyone who is under 50 year old, or who needs power user capabilities. For casual, unsophisticated applications by someone who grew up with green screen character based computers, it's probably OK. See More

Top Pro

Free

Licensed under GNU GPL. See More

Top Con

Emacs lisp is very poorly designed

The language that's used for user customization, extensions, and for much of the basic editor functionality, is Emacs lisp, or elisp for short. I actually like lisp in general, especially Scheme, but unfortunately, elisp is one of the worst versions of lisp ever created, barely meriting being called lisp. It's very slow, impoverished in features, inconsistent, and rather inelegant in design. Elisp needed to be overhauled 20 or 30 years ago, but the Emacs developers were not willing to do the work. I believe this is one of the major reasons Emacs is so buggy, lacking in features, development is so slow, and consequently almost nobody uses it (or should use it) anymore. See More

Top Pro

Great documentation

With 30+ years of use the Emacs documentation is very thorough. There are also a lot of tutorials and guides written by third parties. See More

Top Con

Very poorly maintained

It's not clear to what extent Emacs is still supported. There's still some development taking place, but so slow that it's almost an abandoned project. There are numerous bugs in Emacs, many these days associated with start up and package management. When you search the Internet for solutions, you often find many posts, sometimes going back months or even years, with no clear fix. See More

Top Pro

Vi keybindings through Evil mode

Evil mode emulates vim behaviors within Emacs. It enables Vi users to move inside the Emacs universe. See More

Top Con

Hard customization

For customization, you need to learn Lisp. See More

Top Pro

Provides org-mode

Advanced planning and publication which can start as a simple list. See More

Top Con

A lot of jokes in this serious software

Top Pro

Enormous range of functionalities (way beyond simple "text editing")

Through its programmability, a very broad range of functionalities can be integrated in emacs, turning it even into a "single point of contact" with the underlying operating system. See More

Top Con

Using Emacs on a new machine without your .emacs file

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Works on Linux, Windows, Macintosh, BSD, and others. See More

Top Pro

Integrates planning in your development process

You can jump straight from your org-mode files to programming tasks - and back - and build a seamless workflow. See More

Top Pro

Versatile

Emacs is great for everything. See More

Top Pro

Mini buffer

You can pass complicated arguments in the mini buffer. See More

Top Pro

Ubiquity

Fully compliant GNU-emacs is available on many platforms, and they all understand .emacs configuration files. See More

Top Pro

Rectangular cut and paste

Emacs can select rectangularly. See More

Top Pro

Lisp customizations

With lisp customization, any behavior of Emacs can be changed. Update with pre-release patch can be also applied without recompiling the whole Emacs. See More

Top Pro

Visual selection and text objects with Evil

Evil is an extensible vi layer for Emacs. It provides Vim features like Visual selection and text objects. See More

Top Pro

dabbrev-expand (Alt-/)

Dynamic word completion. See More

Top Pro

Support multi-line editing, multiple frame, powerful paren, crazy jumping style

Review the "Emacs Rocks" video. See More

Top Pro

Has been widely used for a long time

The first verion of Emacs was written in 1974 and GNU Emacs in 1984. See More

Top Pro

Helm plugin adds even more power to Emacs

Powerful commands, search, and more with the Helm plugin. See More

Top Pro

GTK+ widgets support

Since version 25 you can run GTK widgets inside Emacs buffers. One of these is the WebKitGTK+, which allows the user to run a full-featured web browser inside Emacs with JavaScript and CSS support among other things. See More

Top Pro

Excelent tutorial to get you started

The tutorial you are presented with at startup shows you exactly what you need to get started and teaches you how to use the built-in help yourself later. See More

Top Pro

Interactive Shells

Emacs has a number of shell variants: ansi-term, shell, and eshell. See More

Top Pro

Emacs provides magit, the best and most complete GIT interface

Complex git history editing become a breeze with very few keystrokes. And simple ones are quickly stashed in muscle memory. Git becomes an direct extension of your brain thanks to Magit. Cherrypicking, blaming, resetting, interactive rebasing, line level commit, spinoff branches... you name it, magit already has it and has typically all those 5 to 10 git CLI commands of higher-level patterns also tide to one simple shortcut (want to amend a commit three commits away ? forgot to branch out and you've got already N commits on master ? ... etc... ). See More

Top Pro

Gnus

Managing several large mailing lists has never been easier using Gnus. The threading commands and the various ways of scoring articles means that I never miss important messages/authors, etc. A joy to use. See More

Top Pro

Eshell is cross platform

You can use the underlying operating system shell as a terminal emulation in an Emacs buffer. Don't like the default shell for your configuration? You can change it to your liking. See More

Top Pro

Excellent Lisp editing support

Built-in packages make editing Lisp source code feel natural. See More

Top Pro

Use-package and org-mode

Missing some neural package that predicts actions, maybe in the next release ... See More

Specs

Platforms:Unix-like, macOS, Windows, Cygwin

License:GPL-3.0-or-later

Multi Language Support:Yes

Auto Complete:Yes

See All Specs

See All Experiences

846 176

score 2402 · Answer 16

Vim

Top Pro

Lightweight and fast

When compared to modern graphical editors like Atom and Brackets (which have underlying HTML5 engines, browsers, Node, etc.), Vim uses a sliver of the system's memory and it loads instantly, all the while delivering the same features. Vim is also faster than Emacs. See More

Top Con

High effort to customize

A lot of time and effort is put in to make it specific to your needs. See More

Top Pro

Free and open-source software

Vim is open-source, GPL-compatible charityware. See More

Top Con

Difficult learning curve

You'll spend a lot of time learning all the commands and modes supported in Vim. You'll then spend more time tuning settings to your needs. Although once it's tuned to your needs, you can take your .vimrc to any machine you need and have the same experience across all your computers. See More

Top Pro

Works in terminal over SSH

Unlike other editors such as Sublime Text, Vim is a command line editor and hence can be used in remote development environments like Chromebooks via SSH. See More

Top Con

Difficult to copy, paste, and delete

Top Pro

Extremely portable

Vi/vim exists on almost all Unix-like platforms. It's the de-facto Unix editor and is easily installed on Windows. All you need to make it work is a text-based connection, so it works well for remote machines with slow connections, or when you're too lazy to set up a VNC/Remote Desktop connection. See More

Top Con

Poor support for external tooling

Many plugins depend on optional Python and Lua features, which may or may not be included in whatever binaries are available for your system. And without platform-specific hacks, it is difficult for plugins to operate in the background or use external tooling. See More

Top Pro

Keyboard-based, mouse-free interface, and trackpad support

There's no need to reach for the mouse or the Ctrl/Alt buttons again. Everything is a mere key press or two away with almost 200 functions specifically for text editing. Vim does support the mouse, but it's designed so you don't have to use it for greater efficiency. Versions of Vim, like gVim or MacVim, still allow you to use the mouse and familiar platform shortcuts. That can help ease the learning curve and you'll probably find you won't want to (or need to) use the mouse after a while. See More

Top Con

Poor feature discoverability

Though basic features like syntax checking, autocompletion, and file management are all available out of the box or with minimal configuration, this is not obvious to new users, who might get intimidated or assume they need to install complex plugins just so they can have this functionality. Other features new users might expect to find embedded in Vim, such as debugging, instead follow a UNIX-style model where they are called as external programs, the output of which might then be parsed by Vim so it can display results. Users not familiar with this paradigm will likely fault Vim for lacking those features as well. See More

Top Pro

Great productivity

Vim's keyset is mainly restricted to the alphanumeric keys and the escape key. This is an enduring relic of its teletype heritage, but has the effect of making my ost of Vim's functionality accessible without frequent awkward finger reaches. See More

Top Con

No smooth scrolling

Even with the GUI version, the lines jiggle line-by-line. If you are used to smooth scrolling, this is very annoying, especially when working with larger files. See More

Top Pro

Macros increase productivity

Many text editors have programmable macros, but since Vim is keyboard-based, your programmed macros are usually far more predictable and easier to understand. See More

Top Con

Doesn't play nice with the system cut/paste mechanisms

This can be worked around somewhat if you disable mouse for insert mode. You can then right-click your terminal and use paste like you would anywhere else in a terminal. But it still doesn't feel right when the rest of your system uses Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V, and you have a system clipboard manager, and so forth. See More

Top Pro

Excellent performance

As it loads the whole file into RAM, replacing all string occurrences in 100 MB+ files is quick and easy. Every other editor has sort of died during that. It is extremely fast even for cold start. Vim is light-weight and very compact. In terminal, it only uses a small amount of memory and anytime you invoke Vim, it's extremely fast. It's immediate, so much so you can't even notice any time lag. See More

Top Con

Outdated UI

Top Pro

Tons of plugins/add-ons

This makes Vim the definitive resource for every environment (Ruby/Rails, Python, C, etc.), or simply just provides more information in your view. See More

Top Con

Requires Brain Mode Switching

When editing in vim, you have you use the vim keys; when editing in every other window on your PC, or in Word or Excel or other application, you need to use the standard system key combinations. Learning the vim combinations can actually make you SLOWER at everything else. See More

Top Pro

Everything is mnemonic

No need to memorize different key combinations for things like deleting the text inside of a block or deleting the text inside of a pair of quotes. It's just a series of actions, or nouns and verbs, or however you prefer to think about it. If you want to delete, you select "d"; if you want it to happen inside something, you select "i"; and if you want the surrounding double-quotes, just select ". But if you were changing the text, or copying it, or anything else, you'd still use the same "i" and ". This makes it very easy to remember a large number of different extremely useful commands, without the effort it takes to remember all of the Emacs "magic incantations", for example. See More

Top Con

Slow when opening files with very long lines

A lot of very long lines can make Vim take up to a minute to open files, where a few other editors take only seconds to load the same file. See More

Top Pro

Vimtutor

Vimtutor is an excellent interactive tutorial for people with no prior experience of Vim. It takes about 30 minutes to complete. See More

Top Con

Consume brain energy for editing that should be used for logic

Text editing in vim is awesome, but it requires thinking about combination of commands. In other editors, you don't have to think about how to delete this part of code. You just think about how to implement a feature, what is a good design for this code. Even after you get used to using vim, it still requires your brain for editing. See More

Top Pro

Amazing extensibility

Vimscript provides a rich scripting functionality to build upon the core of Vim. When combined with things like Tim Pope's Pathogen plugin management system, it becomes easy to add support for syntax, debugging, build systems, git, and more. See More

Top Con

Foreign keyboards have a hard time on Vim out of the box

A lot of frequently-used keybinds are way harder to access on foreign keyboards because they use different layouts. For example, Germans use the QWERTZ layout, while French use the AZERTY. See More

Top Pro

Usable from a Terminal or with a GUI (GVim, MacVim)

If you happen to be logged into SSH, you can use Vim in a terminal. It can also run with a GUI too. See More

Top Con

Unintuitive mode switching

Top Pro

Has been supported for a long time

And will be supported for many years to come. See More

Top Con

Extensibility isn't that great

While it has gotten better and some projects are slowly starting to build proper extension support, it still can't and by design never will achieve the extensibility of another editor like emacs. See More

Top Pro

Once learned, it's very hard to forget

Vim's somewhat steep learning curve is more than made up for once you've mastered a few basic concepts and learned the tricks that allow you to program faster with fewer cut/paste mistakes. See More

Top Con

Works poorly out of the box with right-to-left

Top Pro

Can never outgrow it

The fact that very few, if any, people claim to be a "Vim Master" is a testament to the breadth and depth of Vim. There is always something new to learn - a new, perhaps more efficient, way to use it. This prevents Vim from ever feeling stale. It's always fresh. See More

Top Pro

Flexible feature-set

Vim allows users to include many features found in IDEs and competing editors, but does not force them all on the user. This not only helps keep it lighter in weight than a lot of other options, but it also helps ensure that some unused features will not get in the way. See More

Top Pro

Has multiple distinct editing modes

Interaction with Vim is centered around several "modes", where purpose and keybindings differ in each. Insert mode is for entering text. This mode most resembles traditional text entry in most editors. Normal mode (the default) is entered by hitting ESC and converts all keybindings to center around movement within the file, search, pane selection, etc. Command mode is entered by hitting ":" in Normal mode and allows you to execute Vim commands and scripts similar in fashion to a shell. Visual mode is for selecting lines, blocks, and characters of code. Those are the major modes, and several more exist depending on what one defines as a "mode" in Vim. See More

Top Pro

By default in Linux

All Linux distributions out there will have Vim built into them, which is highly convenient! See More

Top Pro

Vim encourages discipline

If you use Vim long enough, it will rewire your brain to be more efficient. See More

Top Pro

Useful undo features

Vim does not only offer unlimited undo levels, later releases support an undo tree. It eventually gives the editor VCS-like features. You can undo the current file to any point in the past, even if a change was already undone again. Another neat feature is persistent undo, which enables to undo changes after the file was closed and reopened again. See More

Top Pro

Donations and support to Vim.org helps children in Uganda through ICCF Holland

Top Pro

Built-in package management

Starting with Vim 8, a package manager has been built into Vim. The package manager helps keep track of installed plugins, their versions and also only loads the needed plugins on startup depending on the file type. See More

Top Pro

If you can use Vim you can also use vi

Top Pro

Works on Android

Top Pro

Productivity enhancing modal paradigm

As with all vi-like editors, Vim provides a modal paradigm for text editing and processing that provides a rich syntax and semantic model for composing succinct, powerful commands. While this requires some initial investment in learning how it works in order to take full advantage of its capabilities, it rewards the user well in the long run. This modal interface paradigm also lends itself surprisingly well to many other types of applications that can be controlled by vi-like keybindings, such as browsers, image viewers, media players, network clients (for email and other communication media), and window managers. Even shells (including zsh, tcsh, mksh, and bash, among others) come with vi-like keybinding features that can greatly enhance user comfort and efficiency when the user is familiar with the vi modal editing paradigm. See More

Top Pro

Asynchronous I/O support

Since Vim 8, Vim can exchange characters with background processes asynchronously. This avoids the problem of the text editor getting stuck when a plugin that had to communicate with a server was running. Now plugins can send and receive data from external scripts without forcing Vim to freeze. See More

Top Pro

Can set up keymapping

Top Pro

Multiple clipboards

It is called "registers". See More

Top Pro

Status Booster

Using vim not just increase your productivity, but helps you flex. See More

Specs

Platforms:Linux, macOS, Windows, Cygwin

License:Vim License

Price:0

Extension language:Vim

See All Experiences

2402 445

score 60 · Answer 17

Android-x86

Top Pro

It's a complete port of Android to x86

Top Con

Slow performance

Runs very slow which is not efficient. See More

Top Pro

Has Bluetooth & WiFi support

Top Con

Short list of supported devices

Currently it's tested on only the following devices: ASUS Eee PCs/Laptops Viewsonic Viewpad 10 Dell Inspiron Mini Duo Samsung Q1U Viliv S5 Lenovo ThinkPad x61 Tablet Check them out, download a build and try it for yourself, read their forums and see what is presently happening, from the SurfacePRO 3 work in progress to the older Asus T100 ongoing work and many other PC's, Laptop, 2-in-1's, the older Surface 2, Dell XPS 12, Dell Venue 8, HP Stream, Sony Viao and many others. AOSP KitKat is their present released product, Lollipop version 5.1.1 is their present development cycle. There are builds available for either. See More

Top Pro

Actively developed

Since 2009 the pet project of running Android on a PC by a highly respected developer, has gathered many developer contributions from the open source community...and in 2015 they are still going strong and delivering. Contributors are welcomed and needed for ongoing development work, any donations are accepted. See More

Top Pro

Stable device support

Runs on more devices than any other available Android on a PC product presently available, KitKat, Lollipop, all open source. See More

Top Pro

Open source

Using Open Source Mesa for GPU / Video and presently up to Linux Kernel 4.0.6, with some Kernel 4.1 test builds available from contributors.... See More

Specs

Based On:Android Open Source Project

Default Desktop Environment:Android dalla

Init-System:Android init

Release Schedule:N/A

See All Specs

See All Experiences

60 23

score 2 · Answer 18

qemacs (for quick emacs)

Top Pro

Input methods for most (human) languages

Including e.g. Chinese. See More

Top Pro

Terminal and graphics mode

Supports the terminal mode with 'qemacs -nw' and a graphics mode. See More

Top Pro

Good documentation and help

Context sensitive shortcut help on F1. Good online documentation. See More

Top Pro

Comfortable file browser

Easy to open and manage files (dired-mode). See More

Top Pro

Supports many editing modes besides text

Hex HTML / CSS Image Audio/video (maybe not the most sought after mode in a text editor, but, well, it's there) See More

Top Pro

Full UTF-8 support

Including bi-directional writing. See More

Top Pro

Super lightweight and fast

Top Pro

Emacs like key-bindings

Use your muscle memory if you know Emacs already. See More

See All Experiences

2 1

score 7 · Answer 19

Suplemon

Top Pro

Native multi cursor editing on the command line

Multiple cursors & column selection allow versatile ways of editing. See More

Top Con

No region selection

Some selection features that are taken for granted in other editors are missing here. As they say in their documentation, if you want to copy and paste part of a line, you need to use the mouse to select it and copy with Ctrl + Shift + C. See More

Top Pro

Low learning curve

Does not drown you in keyboard shortcuts or non-intuitive use-concepts as you start using it, but high-level functionality can still be easily accessed when the need for it arises. See More

Top Pro

Mouse support

Scroll wheel works automatically. With mouse mode (F8) the cursor can be moved with a left-click to a desired position, and new cursors can be added with right clicks. See More

Top Pro

No required dependencies

Top Pro

Shows linting messages for Python code (requires flake8)

Specs

Extension language:Python

See All Experiences

7 4

score 55 · Answer 20

BlueStacks

Top Con

Does not run on Linux

Only for Windows and Mac OSX. See More

Top Pro

Easy to use and set up

For end users who are not developers, Bluestacks is perfect for the simple reason that it is just one click install, one just need to download the package and install it on windows or Mac to start accessing games and apps. It is just simple! See More

Top Con

Default home screen can not be customized and lags a lot

Top Pro

Designed with gaming in mind

Top Con

Default launcher hides almost all normal Android functionality

The default launcher acts like a portal to launch games and not much else. If you're looking for a stock setup without much tweaking, look elsewhere. See More

Top Pro

Creates shortcuts for Android apps

A folder on the desktop with shortcuts to apps will be created. Opening a shortcut will start up BlueStacks and run the selected app. See More

Top Con

Has bloatware and popup ads on free plan

You have to pay to remove both bloatware and popup ads. See More

Top Pro

Decent performance

Top Pro

No need to register in order to download and install

Only a Google account is needed, which is the same as setting up an Android phone. See More

Top Pro

Can install apps from Stores and from APK files

Installing apps from APK files is important for developing purposes. See More

Top Pro

Can run multiple instances

Now, running multiple instances of BlueStacks is possible even with different Google Accounts. See More

Top Pro

Can transfer files between BlueStacks and Windows host

There are shared folders for this purpose. See More

Top Pro

Built-in search allows quickly looking up and installing apps

Top Pro

You can use BlueStack tweaker (portable), then you can access root and easily transfer files

You can not only transfer from Windows to Android storage (from BlueStack tweaker), but you can also delete or rename a file from it and also access themes and other options. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows

Processor:intel i5

See All Experiences

55 28