What are the best programming text editors for a Mac with a GUI?

At least on OSX, the "Code Helper" processes use about 200 MB of RAM. 200 MB is a lot for a text editor. By contrast, TextWrangler uses around 60-70 MB of RAM. (Comparison done by opening the same file in both editors). See More

Top Con

Memory hungry

Top Pro

Intellisense Completion

The autocompletion is simply the best. 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

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

Huge

It can take about 20 GB on disk. That's pretty big compared to many alternatives. See More

Top Pro

Libre/open source

Released under the MIT License. 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

Integrated debugging

VSC includes debugging tools for Node.js, TypeScript, and JavaScript. See More

Top Con

No support for tiled/grid editor layouts

It can be configured for rows of editors, or columns of editors, but not both simultaneously. The development team has explicitly said this is not a priority. See More

Top Pro

Embedded Git control

Visual Studio Code has integrated Git control. See More

Top Con

Emmet plugin often fails on even simple p tags

Top Pro

Built-in terminal

It leverages system's default terminal inside the editor. See More

Top Con

Poor error fix suggestions

Error detection and suggestions/fixes are poor compared to IntelliJ platforms. See More

Top Pro

Performance

Blazing fast. 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 Definition support for Javascript

This is good and bad. It means that you get decent auto-complete for many things, but if you are using babel or another compiler then you might be using a feature that Typescript doesn't have and then it complains endlessly. 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

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 Con

Slow loading time

It's built on Electron, which isn't known for having lightning fast startup times. That being said it's comparable to other editors on this list. See More

Top Pro

Great performance

For a 'wrapped' web-based application, Visual Studio Code performs very well. 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

Emmet built in

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

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

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

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

Very bad auto import

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

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

High fidelity C# plugin

The Omnisharp plugin is very powerful providing full sln, csproj, and project.json support. See More

Top Pro

VS Code looks very nice

Even without changing the default theme, vscode could be ranked as the most elegant editor. See More

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 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 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

Huge community behind it

The ease of getting assistance and finding tutorials is increasing as the community grows. 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 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

Good support for new Emmet syntax

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 Pro

Extensions (aka plugins) are written in JavaScript

Extensions are written in either Typescript or JavaScript. See More

Top Pro

Supports RTL languages

It supports pretty much all web rtl languages like arabic languages when most of other editors don't support it. 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

Key bindings are organized in mnemonic namespaces, for instance buffer actions are under b, file actions under f, project actions under p, search actions under s etc... Key bindings are consistent across the whole distribution thanks to a set of conventions. See More

score 32 · Answer 2

Spacemacs

Top Pro

Mnemonic and consistent key bindings

Top Con

Requires prior experience in Vim or Emacs

They have a very poor guide to new users who are not familiar with this type of editor. You should have experience using Vi(-m) or Emacs. Spacemacs is distributed based on Emacs, so you should learn the basic of Emacs. This is not a means to learn from the Emacs's original distribution(GNU Emacs) rather than Spacemacs. Although the advantages of Spacemacs can offset the fundamental difficulty of Emacs, it means that you have to learn another new features and modes beyond the Emacs. See More

cosmo's Experience

Great stuff for Emacs lovers in search of sane defaults and easy setup! As a Neovim lover, I definitely appreciate the focus on Evil mode. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux, BSD

License:GPL-3.0-or-later

Top Pro

Combines the best parts of Vim and Emacs

Spacemacs combines the Emacs platform and Vim UI in the same box. See More

Top Con

Installation instructions are not beginner friendly

Installation instructions, that can be found here require familiarity with the command line and a prerequisite of Emacs. There's no handholding for the installation. See More

Top Pro

Configuration layer 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 to easily manage configuration dependencies between hundreds of packages. 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

Discoverable

Because of its focus on discoverability, the convenience of reading documentation from inside the editor, and the introspection tools Spacemacs inherits from Emacs, Spacemacs can be learned extremely quickly and naturally, with little or no brute memorization. See More

Top Con

Non native

Doesn't work with platform standards. See More

Top Pro

Fast-paced development

New functionalities and fixes are added every day and release cycles are short. 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

Community-driven configuration

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

Use SPACE bar as leader

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

Great support from the community

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

Top Con

Slow 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. See More

Top Pro

IDE-like features, but much faster load times than most IDEs

Spacemacs loads in a few seconds, even with hundreds of packages enabled. And since Emacs can run as a daemon, once Spacemacs is loaded, it can be accessed near instantly from the terminal as well as the GUI. See More

Top Pro

Will teach you Vi(m) keys

While one must know or learn either traditional Emacs keybindings or vi-like keybindings in order to use Spacemacs, the project includes a special version of the classic vimtutor for teaching users how to use vi-style keybindings. Spacemacs thus provides a great place to learn vi keys for new users. 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 Pro

Cross-platform

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

Manage R files easily

Top Pro

Daemon support

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

Top Pro

LaTeX support

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

Top Pro

Works well with Common Lisp

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

Great note-taking and agenda "app" built-in

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

Top Pro

Remote file editing

Files can be edited in Spacemacs remotely. See More

Top Pro

Manage many code bases easily

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

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

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

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

Sublime Text 2 is among the fastest editors as it is and Sublime Text 3 promises to improve the start-up time to become even faster. See More

score 75 · Answer 3

Sublime Text

Top Pro

Fast

Top Con

Payware

Many users tend to forget it, but it is a shareware, with a nag prompt reminding the user should pay for this software... It is not a problem (the company must have a source of income), but it is something to consider when most of the alternatives are free. See More

cosmo's Experience

Absolutely proprietary! There are so many better FLOSS options out there, it's ridiculous. Still, that doesn't mean Sublime Text's UX is bad; it's actually pretty decent. However, I recommend you avoid wasting your time with Sublime Text, and use one of its competitors instead (Oni, Atom, VS Code, etc.). See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux

License:Proprietary

Supported remote file editing protocols:FTP (plug-in); SSH (plug-in)

By default it is very lightweight. With Package Control customization happens on the fly. See More

Top Pro

Lightweight

Top Con

Proprietary

Unlike the Atom editor, Sublime Text protects and copyrights its code and is thus not the freedom-ware some would like it to be. Although the developer and community that surround Sublime text are incredible supporters of open source, the fact that Sublime text is not open source, and that the development of it has slowed down incredibly, makes it difficult for the community to get involved in maintaining the project. Instead, due to the proprietary nature of Sublime, users are at the mercy of the developer's ability and desire to maintain the project. See More

DiplomaticIusaaset's Experience

Non-Native app suffers from predictable issue. See More

Top Pro

Functionality can be easily extended

Sublime Text uses TextMate's syntax declaration files to support new languages, has all its menus and keybindings generated from JSON files, and can be scripted to add new features using Python. If Sublime Text doesn't support a desired language or feature, it's usually not long before someone implements it themselves - examples include the plugin package manager and the 'open in browser' command. See More

Top Con

Annoying whitespace management

All too often it does the wrong thing with indentation on otherwise blank lines. See More

SusanB's Experience

Good enough, I use it from time to time. See More

Top Pro

Multi-line select and editing

Multiple cursors & column selection allow versatile ways of editing. ctrl + d will select the current word and each time the command is repeated add the next occurence of the word to the selection. ctrl + click or middle-mouse click will place another cursor in the place that's clicked. Cursors can then be controlled together. This also allows selecting vertically. See More

Top Con

Paid

Although paying for something good is far from a Con, having the competition this editor has and still have to pay for it is definitely a Con. See More

Top Pro

IDE features without the cruft

Sublime Text, while being lighter-weight than an IDE, still supports many IDE features. Text from the current file is used to provide autocomplete Project Support (folder browsing, scoped history, build-system declarations) Refactoring support is emulated through multi-select, project-wide find & replace, and regular expression search Syntax-aware selection and GoTo for quickly jumping to locations in the project Snippets & Macros A Python console for everything else See More

Top Con

Overrides standard Mac text shortcuts

Sublime's editor may be more advanced than other Cocoa-based editors, but it has no regard for the default behavior of some Mac text shortcuts, opting for a more consistent experience accross platforms. See More

Top Pro

Comfortable to work with

Sublime Text has a minimap on the side that provides a top-down view of the file and keyboard shortcuts for most actions. It also supports a large number of languages and general text editing features out of the box. See More

Top Con

Expensive

License is portable, but costs $70 See More

Top Pro

Beginner-friendly

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 Con

Infrequent updates

Updates for Sublime Text have become almost nonexistent. Granted, it has been speculated that this is because the developer is currently working on other, more time consuming, projects, but the community as a whole still seems to be concerned that the project is approaching a state of abandonment - especially due to the increasingly popular competitor Atom. See More

Top Pro

Consistent cross-platform

Looks consistently the same across Windows, OS X and Linux. See More

Top Con

Interruption while work

"Purchasing" messages box interrupts while saving file. See More

Top Pro

The Command Palette

The Command Palette allows fuzzy searching all available settings, snippets, etc. See More

Top Con

No printing of files

Sublime Texts offers no way of printing the files it edits. See More

Top Pro

Instant file switching

Open Goto Anything by pressing Ctrl or Command + P and using fuzzy search you can look for a file in your project. The file will load even without pressing enter, so you can make sure you've found the correct file without committing. See More

Top Con

Loading big files on Windows is slow

Here's a rough comparison: a 70 MB file takes about 2 seconds to load in Notepad++, whereas the same file in ST3 takes over 10 seconds to load. See More

Top Pro

Support for TextMate themes and window decoration themes

Sublime Text compatibility with Textmate bundles is good, excluding commands which are incompatible. In general, Sublime Text syntax definitions are compatible with Textmate language files (.tmLanguage extension). See More

Top Con

Inadequate language support

Sublime Text offers poor support for Far-East languages in Linux. See More

Top Pro

Distraction free editing mode

Distraction free editing takes over your screen and removes every UI element so you can focus on code. See More

Top Con

The Repl (for R language) consumes a lot of ressource.

Easily loses focus on the Repl after restarting ST. See More

Top Pro

Allows for vim-style editing

Vintage mode is vim-style editing that's already built in the text editor. See More

Top Con

Some plugins are low-quality and may cause crashes

Some plugins are quite buggy, hence installing many can become quite a problem regarding stability. See More

Top Pro

Haxe and OpenFL Integration via plugin

Top Pro

Fully customizable

Sublime Text allows for all sorts of customization to help users change almost everything in the editor: Key Bindings, Menus, Snippets, Macros, Completions, and many more. Essentially, just about everything in Sublime Text is customizable with simple JSON files. This system gives the user flexibility as settings can be specified on a per-file type and per-project basis. See More

Top Pro

Freemium

A Sublime license can be bought but it can still be used for free. However, a pop-up appears when you save multiple times. See More

Top Pro

Multiple languages are supported

Top Pro

Direct server upload

Provides command line shortcut for server upload. See More

Top Pro

Dynamic Build System

Choose from many build systems or craft your own. See More

Top Pro

Highly Theme-able

Create your own theme with online editor. See More

Top Pro

Projects support multiple folders and git repos

Top Pro

Installable package manager

The package manager is a plugin and can be swapped with something else custom. See More

Top Pro

Allows for Vim-style editing

Vintage mode is Vim-style editing that's already built into the text editor. See More

Top Pro

Customizable keymapping

From menus to commands, assign key maps to almost anything. See More

Top Pro

Has tons of plugins available

Top Pro

Portable settings

Settings are modular and can be shared. See More

Top Pro

Easy to get started

All you need to do when starting up is to install a package manager and modify user configuration. See More

Top Pro

Permits instant file switching

Open Goto Anything by pressing Ctrl or Command + P and by using fuzzy search you can look for a file in your project. The file will load even without pressing enter, so you can make sure you've found the correct file without committing. See More

Top Pro

Regex commands

Regex commands help describe a certain amount of text. See More

Top Pro

Very fast

Sublime is quick to start and never slows down. The UI is always responsive and you know what is happening in the background. See More

MacVim, after all is still Vim, and with that comes the complexity that Vim brings and the steep learning curve that needs to be overcome. See More

score 22 · Answer 4

MacVim

Top Con

Steep learning curve

Top Pro

Lots of plugins

Every plugin available for Vim is available for MacVim too. See More

cosmo's Experience

By far, this is my favorite GUI editor for macOS! It's fast, beautiful, powerful, and incredibly extensible! This is the first editor I recommend people try before moving elsewhere. See More

Specs

Platforms:OSX

License:GPL compatible

Collaborative editing:plug-in

Extension language:vimscript

Top Con

Non native

Doesn't conform to platform standards. See More

Top Pro

Extremely customizable

MacVim is Vim, it has all of vim's customizability and power. See More

Top Con

Difficult learning curve

MacVim after all is still Vim, and with that comes the complexity that Vim brings and the difficult learning curve that needs to be overcome. See More

Top Pro

Enables effective keyboard-driven editing due to its modal nature

Interaction with Vim is centered around several modes. Each mode has a different purpose and switching between them changes behaviour and keybindings. There are 12 modes in total (6 basic modes and 6 variations on basic modes) and 4 of them are used commonly. 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. Modes allow separating concerns between various tasks and reusing keys for different kinds of functionality. As a result, the workflow becomes more efficient. See More

Top Pro

Easily and quickly opens gigantic files

You can instantly open files with sizes in the gigabytes. See More

Top Pro

Extensive community support

MacVim, like Vim itself has a large community backing it. See More

Top Pro

Everything is a mnemonic

Vim associates keys with words. For example, d is for "delete", w for "word". To perform an action you string together letters. Thus, to delete a word, press dw. This way it's possible to abstract a large amount of functionality that Vim provides in an intuitive way. See More

Top Pro

OS X input methods

MacVim supports OSX's native shortcuts making the adoption of Vim easier. See More

Top Pro

Vimtutor teaches the basics Vim in 30 minutes

Vimtutor is an excellent interactive tutorial for people with no prior experience in Vim. It's bundled with Vim andtakes about 30 minutes to complete. See More

Top Pro

Multi-byte support

Allows writing characters that don't fit in one byte. Most notably logograms (for writing in languages such as Japanese, Chinese and Korean) and Unicode characters. See More

Top Pro

Automatic font substitution

In cases of a selected font missing certain characters, MacVim will find a font that has that character. See More

Top Pro

Vimtutor teaches the basics of Vim in 30 minutes

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

Atom is not a native application. As such performance is subpar and the lag is especially noticeable on larger projects. It also opens a surprising amount of sub-processes and leaks a considerable amount of memory. See More

score 67 · Answer 5

Atom

Top Con

Slow

Top Pro

Lots of packages

Atom has a built-in package manager and an extensive list of packages. Packages are written in CoffeeScript. See More

cosmo's Experience

The extensibility of Atom is incredible! This thing is a plug-in machine. If you need a specific feature, Atom has it! See More

Specs

Platforms:Microsoft Windows®, macOS, Linux

License:MIT

Collaborative editing:Plug-in

Supported remote file editing protocols:FTP (plug-in); SSH (plug-in)

It's almost impossible to open large files with Atom. It has a 2MB limit and even files smaller than the limit but still considerably large take forever to load. See More

Top Con

Hard to open large files

Top Pro

Hackable

Due to its modular design almost any aspect of the editor can be changed. Even seemingly core packages like the one's taking care of search and replace functionality can be forked on GitHub, changed and replaced in the editor. The Documentation for creating new plugins is also great and thus it's easier for developers ti jump in and create plugins for Atom. See More

Top Con

Missing polish

As Atom is still relatively new, it's missing nice little touches that other text editors have implemented over the years. From simple ease of use things like middle-mouse button multi-cursor select to the ways pasted information from a spreadsheet is interpreted in multi-select situations. See More

Top Pro

Free & open source

Free, open source and written in C++, LESS and CoffeeScript. See More

Top Con

Very slow startup time

Atom is very slow to startup, which is a big disadvantage if you are accustomed to using it to make quick changes on your files. See More

Top Pro

Built in package management

Atom was built from the ground up with the community in mind, and package management is a first class feature. See More

Top Con

High memory usage

Atom has a relatively high memory usage, especially when compared to some other text editors not based on Electron. For those who develop on the go, this also tends to mean shorter battery life. See More

Top Pro

Multiple panes for editing

Top Con

Crash and data loss

A bugreport about that was closed automatically after some time, nobody cares. https://github.com/atom/atom/issues/12245 See More

Top Pro

Command Palette

The Command Palette allows fuzzy searching all available functions, settings, snippets, etc. See More

Top Con

Not stable enough

Sometimes its not stable enough and could have problems. See More

Top Pro

Multi-line select and edit

Multiple cursors & column selection allow versatile ways of editing. ctrl + d will select the current word and each time the command is repeated add the next occurence of the word to the selection. ctrl + click or middle-mouse click will place another cursor in the place that's clicked. Cursors can then be controlled together. This also allows selecting vertically. See More

Top Con

Slows down exponentially with plugins

Extending it requires sacrificing responsiveness. See More

Top Pro

Instant file switching

Ctrl or Command + T and using fuzzy search you can look for a file in your project. See More

Top Con

Depends on old software

Depends on python 2, which dies out. See More

Top Pro

Beginner Friendly

One of the goals of Atom is to be a text editor for both experienced and beginner programmers. You can add keyboard shortcuts, change themes, install plugins, and change core settings by clicking through a GUI, or by manually editing config files the old fashioned way. It has the added advantage of being built using the same engine that powers Google Chrome, so actions like opening and closing tabs feel familiar even to new or non-programmers. See More

Top Con

Doesn't handle RTL (right-to-left text) well

Text can't be highlighted and manipulated properly, cursor isn't displayed visually according to where it is logically (you have to type to find out), and similar issues. See More

Top Pro

Command line integration out of the box

Installing Atom adds two command line commands - atom and apm. The first one runs the application itself and the second one is the Atom Package Manager that's used to add and remove various components from the package listing. While these features can be set up with other editors as well, Atom takes care of them out of the box. See More

Top Con

Non native

Doesn't conform to native platform standards. See More

Top Pro

Embedded Git control

Will highlight folders, files and lines that have any uncommitted edits made. It also integrates really well with GitHub. See More

Top Con

Bloated. Too many packages, too little productivity

Unable to use package to even convert a C file to PDF. See More

Top Pro

HiDPI support

Atom has built in HiDPI support with zero scaling issues. See More

Top Con

Doesn't have a PASCAL option

Sure PASCAL isn't the most popular language out there, but NotePad++ does it (rather well). See More

Top Pro

Node.js integration

The editor is built on top of Node. As such anything that can be done in Node can be done in the editor. See More

Top Pro

Extendable

Due to its modular design, almost any aspect of the editor can be changed. Even seemingly core packages, like those taking care of search and replace functionality, can be forked on GitHub, and changed and replaced in the editor. The documentation for creating new plugins is also great, making it easier for developers to jump in and create plugins for Atom. See More

Top Pro

Multiplatform

Atom can run on Mac, Windows, and Linux. See More

Top Pro

Vim plugin turns Atom into a modernized vim

Top Pro

Modern feel and very customizable

Top Pro

Best support for Arduino with Platformio

Arduino is the most important platform for developing embedded systems. See More

Top Pro

Themes

You can theme and customize Atom to your liking. See More

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

score 19 · Answer 6

BBEdit

Top Pro

Stable development, been around for decades

Top Con

Featureless

FascinatingTulloun's Experience

BBEdit is very stable so it rarely crashes and consequently, I can't remember the last time I lost any work. BBEdit has just about every tool and feature built in, so you don't have to go searching for plug-ins, and/or decide which of various similar-but-defective plug-ins is the one with which you can put up. BBEdit was doing JAMStack for decades before JAMStack was even a thing, so there's that, too. See More

Specs

Platforms:Mac

License:Proprietary

Supported remote file editing protocols:Yes

Top Pro

Can open very large files

Top Con

Expensive

It's US$49.99 a single user license. See More

GraciousSuleviae's Experience

Great for almost everything, solid, opens huge files and very good at large searches across huge directories of many files. 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

TextMate has an API that allows for users and developers to create plugins. See More

score 15 · Answer 7

Textmate

Top Pro

Lots of plugins

Specs

Platforms:OSX

License:GPL

Supported remote file editing protocols:FTP; SFTP

It's lightweight footprint makes it extremely fast to load and use. See More

Top Pro

Lightweight footprint

Top Pro

Open source

Textmate is open source and hosted on GitHub. See More

Top Pro

Multi line select and editing

It allows monitoring code and sync the files that need to be changed with a remote server. This works more efficiently than libnotify and faster than vagrant auto rsync. See More

score 6 · Answer 8

PhpStorm

Top Pro

Auto-sync with remote folders

Specs

Supported remote file editing protocols:FTP; SFTP

Bracket Matching:Yes

Extension language:JVM

Multi Language Support:Yes

Not just for PHP, HTML and JavaScript, but especially good is SQL inspection and auto-completion of tables and fields. You can see at a glance, that your DB structure is in sync with your code. See More

Top Pro

Inspections of all kinds

Top Pro

Intelligent code completion

PhpStorm has two types of autocompletion: structural completion and word expansion. Structural autocompletion makes predictions based on its understanding of PHP, while the latter tries to predict the word currently being typed based on previously typed words. Word expansion also works in comments and docstrings and it's similar to vim's omnicompletion. Both types of autocompletion work extremely well, have little to no problems and are quite fast even when loading suggestions on the go. See More

Top Pro

Regular updates for fixes and new features

PhpStorm is clearly being developed continually, which gives confidence that it will be available for some time and is not abandonware. See More

Top Pro

Emmet integrated

Top Pro

Templating support

Supports Twig and Laravel's Blade (among others). Technically the later is part of a framework which Phpstorm supports but I've seen IDEs (e.g. Netbeans) with Laravel support but no blade support so it does deserve a notable mention. See More

Top Pro

Code Refactoring

Quickly rename classes, methods, and variables used across multiple files in the project. See More

Top Pro

Lots of plugins

Lots of plugins from JetBrains and the community are available, from useful things like support for Docker, Vagrant, Angular, Vue.js and more useless (but fun) like a nyan cat progress bar. See More

Top Pro

Database view

The database tab, while not perfect, provides all the tools you need for daily usage. You always have your DB overview on the side (you can hide it when not needed). See More

Top Pro

Supports various PHP frameworks

Supports Symfony2 (including Twig and Doctrine), Yii frameworks, and Laravel. See More

Top Pro

Pricey

Currently costs £78 but does not seem to offer much more than some free counterparts. See More

Top Pro

Built-in debugger

Has built-in support for Xdebug including remote debugging. See More

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

score 9 · Answer 9

Emacs

Top Con

Long learning curve

Top Pro

Keyboard-focused, mouse-free editing

Emacs can be controlled entirely with the keyboard. See More

LuckyNereus's Experience

All features developer need See More

Specs

Platforms:Unix-like, macOS, Windows, Cygwin

License:GPL-3.0-or-later

Collaborative editing:Yes

Supported remote file editing protocols:FTP; HTTP; SSH; WebDAV

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 Con

Keyboard combinations can be confusing for new users

Top Pro

Versatile

Emacs is great for everything. 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

Free

Licensed under GNU GPL. 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 Pro

Self documenting

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

If you need something cross-platform and you need a GUI, Oni is definitely the way to go! See More

score 4 · Answer 10

Oni editor

Top Pro

Embedded neovim

Top Con

Very new and untested

cosmo's Experience

Specs

Platforms:Linux, Windows, MacOS

GUI:Yes

Top Pro

Command palette

Common commands can be found and executed in the command palette. See More

Top Pro

Support for plugins, high extensibility

Neovim is highly extensible, providing access to amazing features and functions that can transform it into far more than a simple text editor. See More

Top Pro

Built-in file explorer

Top Pro

Multi-platform

Supports Windows, MacOS, Linux. See More

It is easy on the memory usage and starts quickly. See More

score 7 · Answer 11

Brackets

Top Con

Discontinued project

Top Pro

Lightweight

Specs

Platforms:Windows; macOS; Linux

License:MIT

Supported remote file editing protocols:FTP (plug-in)

Brackets is built for web development and that's where it excels at out of the box. Other languages that have a CodeMirror mode can be added as well. See More

Top Con

Supports only web languages by default

Top Pro

Built-in browser live-updating

Brackets will automatically refresh the browser and load the latest saved version of a file open in the browser. Works with php as well. Editing a css will even highlight the tag that's currently worked on. It only works with Chrome though. See More

Top Con

Still missing some elementary text editor commands

Some gaps have to be filled by plugins, while these features should be built in. For example: Jump to matching brace (bracket / parenthesis); Gutter selection of lines; Recall previous searches / replacements; Autofill of search field with text under caret (text has to be selected); Show whitespace / end of lines / indentation guides / right margin; Selection to upper / lower case; and some more. See More

Top Pro

Free, open source and cross-platform

Brackets is entirely free and open source. See More

Top Con

It's rarely updated and still has many bugs

Top Pro

Actively developed

Brackets is being actively maintained and developed. See More

Top Con

Seemingly cannot run multiple instances

You can only open one instance of Brackets, so it's inconvenient trying to separate multiple projects you may be working on. See More

Top Pro

Vim mode

Vim-style editing is already built in the text editor. See More

Top Con

Rarely updated

Updates are few and far between, there has not been any major features added in over a year and many plugins are the same. See More

Top Pro

Support for Adobe PSD content

Default extension allows extraction of PSD resources, such as images and styles. Good integration for placing extracted resources into source. See More

Top Pro

Support drag'n'drop of text, and multi / rectangular selection

Top Pro

Can be hacked by any front-end developer

The editor is built using html, css and javascript making it extendable by any front-end developer. See More

Top Pro

Popup previews

Hovering over colors hex codes or image paths will pop up previews of corresponding colors and images. See More

Top Pro

Can style a tag without switching over to the stylesheet

A feature called quick edit allows selecting a tag in, for example, an html file and edit the associated style without switching over to the css document. It also supports SASS and LESS pre-processors. See More

Top Pro

Built-in extension manager

Functionality of Brackets can be extended via a simple to use extension manager. The extension manager also has a considerable number of extensions and themes. See More

Bare Bones, the developers of TextWranger, recently ended maintenance and support for the product. Per the Bare Bones website (https://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/): "We have sunsetted TextWrangler, and we encourage anyone interested in TextWrangler to download and use BBEdit instead." See More

score 8 · Answer 12

TextWrangler

Top Con

No Longer Maintained

Top Pro

Fast to start up

It starts up fast because is not bloated. It has all the essentials of a text editor. See More

Top Con

Not Compatible with macOS High Sierra (10.13+)

Per the Bare Bones website (https://www.barebones.com/support/new-os.html): "TextWrangler is not compatible with High Sierra. We suggest that you use BBEdit as an alternative . . . ." Since Bare Bones officially sunsetted the product, it will unlikely be compatible with subsequent macOS release versions either. See More

Top Pro

Free

Free but capable alternative to BBEdit. See More

Top Con

Featureless

Top Pro

Built-in FTP/STFP browser

Edit remote files easily. See More

Top Pro

Robust

score 2 · Answer 13

Xcode

Top Pro

Comes with the Mac OS X developer tools

Top Con

Buggy

Top Pro

Supports native Mac tooling such as xcodebuild, Obj-C, frameworks, etc.

Top Con

Not cross-platform and thus need to learn a different IDE for other platforms

Top Pro

Allows for arbitrary Makefile-driven build processes

Top Con

Lacks the same plugability, packages as some more popular editors

Top Pro

Supports code autocompletion

Top Con

Takes longer to startup than some other lighter, faster editors

Top Pro

Supports line numbers

Top Pro

Supports syntax highlighting in most programming languages

It's extremely lightweight and this makes it start pretty quickly. See More

score 3 · Answer 14

Howl

Top Pro

Starts quickly

Top Con

Still under development

Howl is still under active development and it's not stable yet. Features may change in the future. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows; OSX; *nix

License:MIT

Supported remote file editing protocols:No

Howl is very intuitive and easy to use. See More

Top Pro

Easy to use

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

score 1 · Answer 15

Neovim

Top Pro

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

Specs

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

License:Apache

Supported remote file editing protocols:scp, ftp

Bracket Matching:Yes

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

Top Pro

Work in TUI (Text User Interface)

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

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

Built-in terminal emulator

This avoids the user having to make any installations. 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 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

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 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

Gedit is a text editor. Simple and fast and it misses a lot of features. Most notably auto-complete for several languages. See More

score 3 · Answer 16

Gedit

Top Con

Not a lot of features

Top Pro

Great UX

The UI is lean and minimal. Everything feels quite fast and it is easy to add custom shortcuts for doing things like compiling, deploying or testing. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows; OSX; *nix

License:GPL

Collaborative editing:plug-in

Supported remote file editing protocols:FTP; HTTP; SSH; WebDAV

Kate has a vi entry mode. See More

Answer 17

Kate

Top Pro

Vi entry mode

Top Con

Hard to install

Kate can be a little hard to install and configure, especially for beginners. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux, BSD

License:LGPL-2.0-or-later, MIT

Kate is pretty fast and lightweight. This helps it with it's start up speed. See More

RTL:Yes

Top Pro

Fast and minimaistic

Makes styling a site in CSS simpler. See More

score 5 · Answer 18

Coda

Top Pro

Live Preview mode

Top Con

Hasn't been updated in 2 years.

Specs

Platforms:Web, Mobile

Top Pro

Built-in FTP client

Publishing your changes to the web server is a one-click operation. That is, one click per file, or one click for all your changed files. Or even cherry-pick the files to be published in the next batch. See More

Top Con

Expensive

The price of $99 is more than many other editors. See More

Top Pro

Built-in support for Git and Subversion

Although the software doesn't ship with these libraries, it does work once you have one installed. See More

Top Pro

Mature

Coda has been developed by Panic exclusively for Mac since 2007. The experience of the developers shows in the stability and polish of their product. See More

Top Pro

Many plugins available

There is a huge library of user-created plugins, ranging from additional syntax modes, to code validation and beautification, to reference materials, code snippets, text actions and more. See More

One of the few Native MacOS apps in the round-up - it really shines with performance and behaving like a Mac app should. See More

score 3 · Answer 19

Chocolat

Top Pro

The auto-completions is very powerful

DiplomaticIusaaset's Experience

Top Pro

Accepts Textmate budles

Top Pro

Fast

Native Cocoa app See More

Top Pro

Live error checking

Chocolat supports live error checking. See More

Top Pro

Built-in access to MDN

Chocolat offers integrated web-based documentation, so you can quickly look up anything you might need clarification on. See More

Top Pro

Unlimited split viewing

Chocolat allows you to view as many files side-by-side as you'd like, rather than limiting you to two. See More