Introducing
The Slant team built an AI & it’s awesome
Find the best product instantly
Add to Chrome
Add to Edge
Add to Firefox
Add to Opera
Add to Brave
Add to Safari
Try it now
4.7 star rating
0
What is the best alternative to Textpad?
Ad
Ad
Light Table
All
4
Experiences
Pros
3
Specs
Top
Pro
Inline evaluation
With LT's inline evaluation, you don't have to re-compile your whole source file. Each time you want to see an output, all you have to do is hover your cursor over the line you'd like to evaluate and press ctrl+enter; LT will evaluate that line of code for you.
See More
Top
Pro
Your code runs live as you write it
The "Watches" feature lets you see your code running live as you type it. This means that you can debug your code live while writing it, which leads to considerably less programming errors.
See More
Top
Pro
Plugin manager available
LT has a plugin manager built directly inside of it. This plugin manager connects to LT's own registry of plugins, so whenever you want assistance while writing your HTML, JS, or even Python, just open up the plugin manager, search for it, and click the little install button beside it's name. Your plugin will then be installed.
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Windows, Linux, Mac
License:
MIT
Integrated Debugger:
REPL
Collaborative editing:
No
See All Specs
Hide
Get it
here
61
31
Textadept
All
7
Experiences
Pros
5
Cons
1
Specs
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
Hide
See All
Experiences
Free
43
3
Kate
All
10
Experiences
Pros
8
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Pro
Integrated terminal
Has a terminal that can sync to the location of your document, letting you compile or run your program quickly or run quick commands, all without leaving the editor.
See More
Top
Con
Hard to install on Windows or OS X
Kate can be a little hard to install and configure, especially for beginners. On Linux or BSD, it can be easily installed from your distribution's repositories.
See More
Top
Pro
Project mode
Kate allows you to make projects to simplify the organisation of your code. This brings in additional organization of an IDE without the overhead.
See More
Top
Pro
Fast and minimaistic
Kate is pretty fast and lightweight. This helps it with it's start up speed.
See More
Top
Pro
Syntax highlighting
Kate supports syntax highlighting for over 180 languages, from Assembler to Zsh.
See More
Top
Pro
Edit over FTP, SSH, or other protocols
Kate uses KDE's input and output libraries to read and write files, allowing seamless integration with FTP, SMB, SFTP, and many other protocols.
See More
Top
Pro
Thriving plugin ecosystem
Lots of plugins allow Kate to expand or shrink based on your needs. It includes GDB integration, XML completion, and symbol viewing to speed up programming.
See More
Top
Pro
By far one of the best and lightest text editors.
Notepads alternative (for the Windows users).
See More
Top
Pro
Vi entry mode
Kate has a vi entry mode.
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Windows, macOS, Linux, BSD
License:
LGPL-2.0-or-later, MIT
Collaborative editing:
No
RTL:
Yes
Hide
See All
Experiences
Free
148
19
UltraEdit
All
12
Experiences
Pros
9
Cons
2
Specs
Top
Pro
Handles large files (>1GB) extremely well
UltraEdit has small memory usage and allows for fast parsing/searching when handling large files.
See More
Top
Con
Proprietary
It's not free and a license costs $79.99.
See More
Top
Pro
Works perfectly with remote files
Supports several protocols for accessing remote files and working on them with the same ease as local files. Files can be integrated in the projects as normal files.
See More
Top
Con
The themes introduced in version 20 regressed certain aspects of syntax coloring
The themes simplified the syntax highlighting which lost the capacity to have as many colors as one wanted to define. Now it is limited to around 20 different colors. In general it's not a problem but in certain cases it broke coloring. For some reason, the classic theme is the only one that is totally pleasant for readability well with syntax highlighting.
See More
Top
Pro
Probably the most versatile general editor in existence.
If you need a general editor, UltraEdit is the way to go. If you were writing C/C++ all day, then this would be your editor. If you need to slog through large files then this is your go to editor. If you need to go through XML files, then this is your editor. If you need to sort data, then this your my editor.
See More
Top
Pro
Fast, stable, easy to use
It loads with a short delay, but once loaded it's snappy and rock-solid. Anyone accustomed to using Windows text editors will feel at home in its interface, and those that prefer alternate keybindings can easily change them.
See More
Top
Pro
Search and replace capabilities
From Ultraedit to Perl to Unix regex engines, the search and replace can accomplish just about anything.
See More
Top
Pro
Responsive company
Whether for feature requests, technical support or license questions, IDM is always quick to respond.
See More
Top
Pro
Nice hex display & edit
There's a handful of other features like this that make UltraEdit indispensable.
See More
Top
Pro
Extremely customizable GUI editor
UltraEdit offer the best of both worlds. it has a full on GUI along with all the shortcut commands you need. There's no need for the user to suffer 80 char limitations of a terminal editor.
See More
Top
Pro
Highly flexible
UltraEdit allows you to handle groups of files as a project.
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Windows, macOS, Linux
Hide
See All
Experiences
$79.99
58
11
Geany
All
14
Experiences
Pros
10
Cons
3
Specs
Top
Pro
Light and fast
Geany is very lightweight thanks to the smaller offering of features.
See More
Top
Con
Not very advanced
Although it has some IDE features, it is not as advanced as some other text editors that can be extended to contain IDE functionality.
See More
Top
Pro
Built-in plugin manager
Geany has a built-in plugin manager which can be used to install plugins and add new powerful features to the editor.
See More
Top
Con
Windows installer not digitally signed
See More
Top
Pro
Quick search on large files
In Geany you technically search once for a whole search query, unlike Gedit, where once you start typing, the file is searched for in accordance with each substring of what you're typing, all the while leading to terribly annoying lag.
See More
Top
Con
Not many third-party plugins
Geany is not as popular as some other text editors with plugin support. As such it's understandable that it's missing lots of powerful plugins available in other editors.
See More
Top
Pro
Cross platform
Geany is a cross platform editor, very similar to Notepad++ in Windows.
See More
Top
Pro
Build in terminal
Press F5 and code will run without the need to switch between windows.
See More
Top
Pro
Actively developed Free (as in freedom) Software
This software respects your freedom.
See More
Top
Pro
Real syntax parsing (not just coloring)
Hence it is capable of showing the methods and inner classes of, e.g., a Java source file.
See More
Top
Pro
Simple project management
See More
Top
Pro
Native
It is a real app and not another frankenstein web/electron app. This means it runs great and doesn't extraordinary amounts of RAM.
See More
Top
Pro
Options in the menu are easy to find
For example, there is an easy way to change the font and theme in the View menu. No need to search through several syntax styles like in Notepad++ just to be able to change the used font.
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Windows, macOS, Linux
License:
GPL-2.0-only
Multi Language Support:
Yes
Auto Complete:
Yes
See All Specs
Hide
See All
Experiences
Free
325
63
SlickEdit
All
16
Experiences
Pros
14
Cons
2
Top
Pro
Extensive support for programming languages
SlickEdit supports over 50 programming languages on nine platforms.
See More
Top
Con
No command line option
This is a visual only editor
See More
Top
Pro
Built-in beautifier
The beautifier formats code as you type to help improve readability and consistency.
See More
Top
Con
It's kinda slow
If you have a very large project or tag database, it can hang the UI.
See More
Top
Pro
Compiler tools
See More
Top
Pro
Scriptable
Write custom macro commands, functions, dialogs and tool windows.
See More
Top
Pro
Over 13 emulations
Choose from fifteen keyboard emulations, containing the key bindings and behaviors necessary to emulate other editors (e.g., CUA, Vim, GNU Emacs, etc.)
See More
Top
Pro
Extensive configuration options
See More
Top
Pro
Easy access to Visual Studio workspace
SlickEdit opens Visual Studio workspace with no conversions needed.
See More
Top
Pro
Symbol analysis support
There are powerful symbol analysis features in SlickEdit, including context tagging and references.
See More
Top
Pro
Integrated debuggers for multiple languages
Integrated debuggers for GNU C++, Java, Python, Perl, Ruby, and PHP.
See More
Top
Pro
Multi-Platform
Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris SPARC, Solaris x86
See More
Top
Pro
Portable mode
Possibility to set up a portable installation, to run on a USB drive for example.
See More
Top
Pro
Easy access to XCode projects
SlickEdit opens XCode projects with no conversions needed.
See More
Top
Pro
Third party tool integration
See More
Top
Pro
Popular version control system
See More
Hide
See All
Experiences
99$
63
17
Vim
All
46
Experiences
Pros
30
Cons
15
Specs
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
See More
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
See More
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
See More
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
See More
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
See More
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
See More
Top
Pro
Works on Android
See More
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
See More
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
Hide
See All
Experiences
free
2402
445
Visual Studio Code
All
39
Experiences
Pros
24
Cons
14
Specs
Top
Pro
Extendable through plug-ins
Visual Studio Code comes fairly complete out of the box, but there are many plug-ins available to extend its functionality.
See More
Top
Con
Embedded Git isn't powerful enough
You can do nothing but to track changes, stage them and commit. No history, visualization, rebasing or cherry-picking – these things are left to git console or external git client.
See More
Top
Pro
TypeScript integration
There is very solid TypeScript integration in Visual Studio Code. Both are developed by Microsoft and VSC itself is written in TypeScript.
See More
Top
Con
The autocomplete and code check is not as powerful as the one on WebStorm
Sometimes it doesn't tell you if you made a typo in a method name or if a method is not used and several other important features.
See More
Top
Pro
Integrated debugging
VSC includes debugging tools for Node.js, TypeScript, and JavaScript.
See More
Top
Con
File search is extremely slow
It's absolutely not possible to use this tool with big projects given how long it takes to search for files.
See More
Top
Pro
Ready to use out of the box
You don't need to configure and add plugins before being productive. However, you can add plugins if needed but for the basics you're well covered.
See More
Top
Con
Project search limits results
Because file search is so slow your results are limited in order to simulate a faster search.
See More
Top
Pro
Integrated terminal
There's no need to press alt+tab to go to a terminal: it is directly integrated into the editor. Shift+~ is a handy hotkey to toggle the integrated terminal.
See More
Top
Con
Very bad auto import
See More
Top
Pro
Great performance
For a 'wrapped' web-based application, Visual Studio Code performs very well.
See More
Top
Con
Generalized
VS Code is a general code/scripting IDE built to be lightweight and for people familiar with their language of choice, not directly comparable to Visual Studio in power or scope.
See More
Top
Pro
Libre/open source
Released under the MIT License.
See More
Top
Con
Memory hog
Allegedly, VS Code is "lightweight". Yet, running multiple instances of it at once, you may get many "out of memory" messages from Windows despite 16 GB RAM. (While of course also running other things. The point is the comparison with some other IDEs/editors where running them alongside the same number of other applications doesn't cause Windows to run out of memory)
See More
Top
Pro
Fast and powerful
VS-Code has the speed of Sublime and the power of WebStorm. Perhaps this is the best software that Microsoft has ever created.
See More
Top
Con
Poor error fix suggestions
Error detection and suggestions/fixes are poor compared to IntelliJ platforms
See More
Top
Pro
JavaScript IntelliSense support
JavaScript IntelliSense allows Visual Studio Code to provide you with useful hints and auto-completion features while you code.
See More
Top
Con
A "me too" offering from MS, far behind other well established editors that it attempts to clone
Other IDEs specific to a language often offer better tools for deep programming.
See More
Top
Pro
Embedded Git control
Visual Studio Code has integrated Git control, guaranteeing speed, data integrity, and support for distributed, non-linear workflows.
See More
Top
Con
Slow launch time
Slower than it's competitors, e.g. Sublime Text.
See More
Top
Pro
Updated frequently
There's a new release of Visual Studio Code every month. If you are one of the insiders then releases are daily.
See More
Top
Con
Emmet plugin often fails on even simple p tags
See More
Top
Pro
ESLint integration
ESLint integrates great. You can define your rules trough .eslintrc.* as usual and vs code will autofix your code on save. So your code is always in style.
See More
Top
Con
Have no good default js style analyzer
In WebStorm there is analyzer that checks for warnings and highlight this in yellow, here you cannot find or add it even with plugins. It is possible to have it as errors with linter but while you are actively changing file that's not very nice.
See More
Top
Pro
Extensions (aka plugins) are written in JavaScript
Extensions are written in either Typescript or JavaScript.
See More
Top
Con
.sass linting is terrible
See More
Top
Pro
Active development
It's really nice to see how the code editor evolves. Every month there is a new version with great communication of new features and changes.
See More
Top
Con
Is not an IDE, is a text editor
See More
Top
Pro
Integrated task runners
Task runners display lists of available tasks and performing these tasks is as simple as a click of the mouse.
See More
Top
Pro
It has gotten really good
All it takes is one stop for all the features many people need.
See More
Top
Pro
Custom snippets support
Snippets are templates that will insert text for you and adapt it to their context, and in VSC they are highly customizable.
See More
Top
Pro
Huge community behind it
The ease of getting assistance and finding tutorials is increasing as the community grows.
See More
Top
Pro
JS typechecking
It leverages TypeScript compiler functionality to statically type check JS (type inference, JSDoc types) with "javascript.implicitProjectConfig.checkJs": true option.
See More
Top
Pro
Python support
Excellent Python plugin, originally created by Don Jayamanne, now hired by Microsoft to extend and maintain the extension.
See More
Top
Pro
Good support for new Emmet syntax
See More
Top
Pro
High fidelity C# plugin
The Omnisharp plugin is very powerful providing full sln, csproj, and project.json support.
See More
Top
Pro
Support RTL languages
It supports pretty web rtl languages like arabic languages when most of other editors don't support it.
See More
Top
Pro
Inline definition picking and usages finding
These features allow you to have a glance at code without opening it as a whole in a separate tab. Moreover, editing is allowed.
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Windows, macOS, Linux
License:
MIT, Proprietary (official builds)
Multi Language Support:
Yes
Auto Complete:
Yes
See All Specs
Hide
See All
Experiences
FREE
4160
832
Notepad++
All
20
Experiences
Pros
12
Cons
7
Specs
Top
Pro
Syntax highlighting for a wide variety of languages
Notepad++ has built-in support for syntax highlighting for a wide selection of programming languages.
See More
Top
Con
Windows-only
While it can run in Wine, it is native only to Windows. Linux users will have to use Notepadqq instead.
See More
Top
Pro
Light and fast
Notepad++ is a very light program that starts almost instantly. This makes it a great text editor for users that want something that will start the second they open it.
See More
Top
Con
Settings confusingly scattered
Examples: try to change the tab size or used font.
See More
Top
Pro
Extendable via plugins
A list of hundreds of plugins is maintained.
See More
Top
Con
Annoying update notifications upon start-up
Annoying update notifications tend to pop up upon start-up after not having used the app or machine for a few days. At the same time, they can be easily turned off.
See More
Top
Pro
Portable
You can get a portable version of N++ and put it on a flash drive or your dropbox account and have your editor, configured the way you like, at any computer that you are on.
See More
Top
Con
Outdated UI
Only the text area can be themed, and it doesn't have as many features as browser-based text areas.
See More
Top
Pro
Free under GPL
Notepad++ is licensed under GPL, which means it is free/open source software that you can use freely.
See More
Top
Con
Limited new syntax support for new languages
It may be hard to find good plugins for relatively new languages.
See More
Top
Pro
Regex replace in selection, active tab, or all tabs
In Notepad++, the user can utilise regular expressions to quickly modify text across multiple files.
See More
Top
Con
Session backups not enabled by default
Unsaved tabs will be lost when Npp crashes, unless you first enable the session backup option.
See More
Top
Pro
Persistent documents, even after exiting the application
If you close Notepad++ (npp), your documents remain even if you haven't saved.
See More
Top
Con
User defined language doesn't support triple quote strings
It also doesn't support triple hashed comments. Both styles are overridden by their single character single line version.
See More
Top
Pro
User defined language syntax support
You can define your own custom syntax highlighting rules (or add support for others) .
See More
Top
Pro
Easy to use and admin
Very easy to use and personalize.
See More
Top
Pro
Multi-line editing
While it is disabled by default, when enabled, it is possible to edit more than one line at a time. This is helpful in many situations.
See More
Top
Pro
Split screen
The user can open and edit files in multiple screens within the editor window.
See More
Top
Pro
Supports Markdown
If you have the Plugin Manager installed you can search for MarkdownViewer++ and install it via that plugin.
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Windows
License:
GPL-3.0-or-later
Multi Language Support:
Yes
Auto Complete:
Yes
See All Specs
Hide
See All
Experiences
Free
579
161
CodeRunner
All
4
Experiences
Pros
2
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Con
Working with very very large projects
Code runner is fantastic for shorter projects, although it can handle very large projects. It stops code completion when the program gets to be several thousands of lines long.
See More
Top
Pro
Fast and efficient
You can have multiple tabs open with multiple languages in at the same time and Code Runner still performs excellently. Searching through code is always instant and executing code is fast.
See More
Top
Pro
Supports many different languages
Code Runner comes preinstalled with over 20 languages built in, and it's super easy to run simple programs.
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Mac
Hide
$14,99
21
1
Codiad
All
10
Experiences
Pros
5
Cons
5
Top
Pro
Open source
You can run Codiad on your server to allow you and your team to edit files. Simplest to run may be using a Docker image like linuxserver/codiad.
See More
Top
Con
Terminal runs as same user for everyone
No matter who is the logged in user, the Terminal plugin runs commands as the PHP user. This also affects the Git plugin in that there is a single SSH key for all users using your Codiad instance.
See More
Top
Pro
Easy to self-host: Only requires PHP
It only requires PHP 5+ and Nginx or Apache. No database is required. This makes it really easy to install on many servers include shared hosting.
See More
Top
Con
Full of small bugs
There are plenty of various issues and bug that may either be due to your setup and the UI will not report them, or due to bugs in the code; I'm including common plugins here as well (just naming a few: search files and in files may report nothing if it had an error, commands stderr not printed, marketplace not showing items, search in market place showing no results, Git escaping ( by \( in the commit message for no good reason...). Those are generally small but together it makes the product feel flawed.
See More
Top
Pro
Multi-line edit
Allows to edit multiple things are once by having multiple cursors like Sublime Text.
See More
Top
Con
Currently no search and replace in multiple files
There is a search in multiple files, and search & replace in current file, but not something to perform a search & replace in multiple files.
See More
Top
Pro
Has many easily installable plugins
Many plugins exist, from Terminal, Git to Collaboration and Emmet... Plugins can be installed by using the web interface, or by manually extracting files to the right directory.
See More
Top
Con
Terminal doesn't TTY
The terminal plugin for Codiad allows users to type some commands and see the outputs, but not interactive input is supported (i.e. stdin is closed). Meaning you cannot run Vim, Tmux or anything requiring user inputs.
See More
Top
Pro
Simple and easily managable GUI
See More
Top
Con
Demo only lasts 30min
See More
Hide
See All
Experiences
Get it
here
4
0
Kakoune
All
13
Experiences
Pros
8
Cons
4
Specs
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
See More
Top
Pro
More modern than vim
See More
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+???)
See More
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++
See More
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
See More
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
Hide
See All
Experiences
Get it
here
83
7
PSPad
All
12
Experiences
Pros
8
Cons
3
Specs
Top
Pro
Free
PSPad is completely free to download and use.
See More
Top
Con
Windows only
It's only available for Windows.
See More
Top
Pro
Simple and small
PSPad is simple, small, and lightweight. It's also quite fast.
See More
Top
Con
No code folding
Does not support code folding.
See More
Top
Pro
Code highlighting for many languages
PSPad supports code highlighting for several languages.
See More
Top
Con
No content assist
See More
Top
Pro
Portable version
See More
Top
Pro
Column mode
Editing in column mode.
See More
Top
Pro
Integrated HEX editor
See More
Top
Pro
Accented words
In PSPad, the user can add accents to words.
See More
Top
Pro
Integrated FTP client
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Windows
License:
Freeware
Multi Language Support:
Yes
Auto Complete:
Yes
See All Specs
Hide
See All
Experiences
Get it
here
18
3
JetBrains Rider
All
15
Experiences
Pros
10
Cons
5
Top
Pro
New C# IDE based on ReSharper and the IntelliJ platform
ReSharper is a popular Visual Studio Extension for .NET Developers. IntelliJ IDEA is a popular and fully featured JAVA IDE.
See More
Top
Con
Not free
Project Rider has a trial version available, but is not free.
See More
Top
Pro
Superior "quality of life" features
Extremely good at filling in all the mindless boilerplate type code while you stay productive.
See More
Top
Con
No support for dotTrace, dotMemory yet on macOS
Support is promised on macOS, but currently only available on Windows. This means it’s not ideally suited for performance tracing and debugging.
See More
Top
Pro
Fast performant
Rider has everything you want from a serious IDE, but without the bloat. This results in significantly fast performance in day to day operations.
See More
Top
Con
Is RAM hungry
This product can hang a huge amount of RAM memory, up to 4 GB.
See More
Top
Pro
Multiple runtime support
Project Rider supports the .NET Framework and Mono, with CoreCLR support in the works. It also includes templates for creating new projects, and when you create an empty project, it's literally empty
See More
Top
Con
Relatively young project
Some bugs are to be expected since it's still a relatively young project.
See More
Top
Pro
Cross-platform
As well as running and debugging multiple runtimes, Project Rider itself runs on multiple platforms. It runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.
See More
Top
Con
Abnormal key maps
Though Visual Studio Key Map can be installed, it is still hard to find where the plugins are installed when one uses it to open a solution for the first time.
See More
Top
Pro
Decompile code for any .net library
See More
Top
Pro
Version control integration
Intellij plugins for Git, Mercurial, and TFS plus Local History of files.
See More
Top
Pro
Supports all the development lifecycle
Project Rider can build MSBuild and XBuild solutions as well as DNX/.NET CLI projects, and allows debugging .NET and Mono applications. DNX/.NET CLI debugging and CoreCLR support are coming.
See More
Top
Pro
Excellent UI, Features beyond Visual Studio (File Layout just one example)
See More
Top
Pro
Free for Students
With a university email, Rider can be obtained for free.
See More
Hide
See All
Experiences
€139/First Year
462
41
GVim
All
6
Experiences
Pros
5
Cons
1
Top
Pro
Vim without a shell
When opening files from the file manager, it is still nice to have vim.
See More
Top
Con
GVim, like Vim, has a difficult learning curve
A lot of time is needed to learn all the commands and modes supported. A lot of time will also be spent tuning all the settings to the user's preference.
See More
Top
Pro
Excellent performance
Because it loads the whole file into RAM, replacing all string occurences in 100MB+ files is quick and easy. Every other editor sort of died during that.
See More
Top
Pro
Works on all platforms
Whether its your windows machine, a Linux, Unix or a Mac Vim would work everywhere. You can even build it from its source on your favorite linux environment.
See More
Top
Pro
Has different cursor shape in command and insert modes
Unlike vim, gvim has different cursor shape in command and insert mode, which is very convenient.
See More
Top
Pro
Supports all vim features and settings
All vim features, custom settings, and plugins are automatically available.
See More
Hide
Get it
here
10
2
BBEdit
All
10
Experiences
Pros
7
Cons
2
Specs
Top
Pro
Stable development, been around for decades
BBEdit is commercial software, the paid counterpart to their free application Textwrangler. Though BBEdit comes off as pricey, this allows for stable and consistent updates from the developers. BBEdit has been around since 1992.
See More
Top
Con
Featureless
See More
Top
Pro
Can open very large files
See More
Top
Con
Expensive
It's US$49.99 a single user license.
See More
Top
Pro
Just about every feature is already built in
No searching for plug-ins that may or may not work.
See More
Top
Pro
Great customer support
The developer is very responsive to bug reports and feature suggestions.
See More
Top
Pro
Native application
Follows platform standards.
See More
Top
Pro
Built-in FTP/SFTP browser
BBEdit can open files directly from, and save them to, any available FTP server. It can also open and save files directly via SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol).
See More
Top
Pro
Great JAMStack environment
You can build the static site of your dreams without needing any external assistants. Although it does not process LESS, SASS, or SCSS files, BBEdit's includes are very powerful.
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Mac
License:
Proprietary
Collaborative editing:
No
Supported remote file editing protocols:
Yes
Hide
See All
Experiences
Get it
here
57
9
Howl
All
11
Experiences
Pros
9
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Pro
Keyboard driven
You don't need the mouse to use Howl. Everything can be accomplished with commands and shortcuts.
See More
Top
Con
Lack of Lua examples
Although Howl can be extended in both Lua and MoonScript, almost all bundles are written in MoonScript. This means that it is a bit harder to find examples if you'd rather write your bundle in Lua. MoonScript can be compiled to Lua but the code won't be as clean and understandable as if it would've been written in Lua by hand.
See More
Top
Pro
Fast startup
It's extremely lightweight, making it start up pretty quickly.
See More
Top
Pro
Easy to use
Howl is very intuitive and easy to use.
See More
Top
Pro
Easy to extend
Plugins (bundles) can be written in Lua or MoonScript.
See More
Top
Pro
UI Focused on editting
Non distracted icons, toolbars, pannels, extra spacing, etc.
See More
Top
Pro
Language tooling
Has built-in functionality for completion, inline documentation and linting so IDE-like features can be added easily.
See More
Top
Pro
Command line palette
Search for your commands in an easy way and see in the list which key-strokes are mapped to which commands
See More
Top
Pro
Open source
Howl is an open source project and is actively developed on GitHub(howl-editor/howl). It has a MIT license.
See More
Top
Pro
Works on OpenBSD
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Windows; OSX; *nix
License:
MIT
Multi Language Support:
Yes
Auto Complete:
Yes
See All Specs
Hide
See All
Experiences
free
23
5
typora
All
20
Experiences
Pros
14
Cons
5
Specs
Top
Pro
Live preview
Typora immediately renders what's typed on the screen in Markdown format. This helps users to have a better understanding of how their document is being formatted.
See More
Top
Con
No mobile (Android/iOS) apps
See More
Top
Pro
Hybrid interface
The editor and preview dual-pane setup typical of desktop Markdown editors are gone; instead, a singular interface makes for a WYSIWYG experience. This streamlines the workflow and encourages direct manipulation.
See More
Top
Con
In beta
Typora is still in beta and may be prone to changes or bugs.
See More
Top
Pro
Support for LaTeX expressions
It supports LaTeX expressions, with an easy-to-use MaxJax panel.
See More
Top
Con
Unusable image management
See More
Top
Pro
Syntax highlight for fenced codes
It supports GFM's code fences, with syntax highlight support for C/C++, java, etc.
See More
Top
Con
The immediate rendering of Markdown is hard on the eyes
Having Markdown immediately render causes text to jump into formatted text, which is distracting and hard on the eyes.
See More
Top
Pro
Custom theme support
Typora has clean yet beautiful built-in themes and allows for users to create new themes using CSS.
See More
Top
Con
No portable version (Windows)
You need admin rights on a managed Windows computer to install it. There currently is no portable version available.
See More
Top
Pro
Support for tables
It supports tables for Markdown Extra. And also provides a GUI to make it easy to insert and edit them.
See More
Top
Pro
Inline images
It won't display image like , But shows the image content inside the editor.
See More
Top
Pro
Free during beta
See More
Top
Pro
Shows table of contents for the document
It supports an outline for the document, by showing a table of contents on the left side of the screen.
See More
Top
Pro
Cross-platform
Currently works on Windows, Mac and Linux.
See More
Top
Pro
Natural typing experience
Editing in Markdown, either in WYSIWYG mode or in markdown code mode, feels natural. It never gets in the way.
See More
Top
Pro
Make charts and diagrams with Mermaid, FlowChart and Sequence
Use fenced code-blocks to render diagrams using syntax from Mermaid and FlowChart.js.
See More
Top
Pro
Sidebar with a list of files
You can open any folder in sidebar and see a list of other markdown files.
See More
Top
Pro
Syncs with iCloud
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Mac OSX; Windows; Linux
License:
Proprietary
Price:
$14.99
Export:
HTML; HTML (pure); PDF; Word; OpenOffice; RTF; Epub; LaTeX; Media Wiki; ReStructuredText; Textile; OPML
See All Specs
Hide
See All
Experiences
Get it
here
484
59
Spacemacs
All
31
Experiences
Pros
25
Cons
5
Specs
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
See More
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
See More
Top
Pro
Works well with Common Lisp
See More
Top
Pro
Manage R files easily
See More
Top
Pro
Great Clojure support
See More
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
Hide
See All
Experiences
FREE
602
74
Editra
All
8
Experiences
Pros
6
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Pro
Very customizable
See More
Top
Con
UI is ugly and outdated
Editra's UI is rather ugly and outdated and the color scheme is not as sleek as the other options out there.
See More
Top
Pro
Small and portable
Editra's small size makes it extremely fast and portable. It can be uploaded in a USB drive and be used on the go.
See More
Top
Pro
Powerful
Editra can open more than 60 different types of source code, each with syntax highlighting and many other features. It also has many widgets that can be installed to make the user experience easier (you can download them from the main site).
See More
Top
Pro
Cross-platform and open source
Editra can run on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. Its sources are easily available from the site.
See More
Top
Pro
Simple
Editra has a simple and very customizable UI.
See More
Top
Pro
Python IDE
It's written in Python and can also be used as a Python IDE. Just by extending it through the installation of additional features and widgets, Editra can become an IDE for any programming language it supports.
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Windows; OSX; Linux
License:
wxWindows
Column selection:
Yes
Supported keybinding styles:
Vi
Hide
See All
Experiences
Get it
here
1
0
Built By the Slant team
Find the best product instantly.
4.7 star rating
Add to Chrome
Add to Edge
Add to Firefox
Add to Opera
Add to Brave
Add to Safari
Try it now - it's free
{}
undefined
url next
price drop