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DevelopmentProductivityText Editor

What are the best GUI Sublime Text alternatives?

16

Options
Considered

180

User
Recs.

Jan 20, 2024

Last
Updated

16 Options Considered

Best GUI Sublime Text alternatives	Price	Platforms	License
-- CudaText	Free	Windows, macOS, Linux, BSD	MPL-2.0
53 Visual Studio Code	FREE	Windows, macOS, Linux	MIT, Proprietary (official builds)
52 Atom	-	Microsoft Windows®, macOS, Linux	MIT
-- Spacemacs	-	Windows, macOS, Linux, BSD	GPL-3.0-or-later
-- Emacs	-	Unix-like, macOS, Windows, Cygwin	GPL-3.0-or-later

CudaText

Top Pro

Has features similar to Sublime Text

mini map command panel multi cursor plugins See More

Top Con

The overwhelming customization can often be very distracting

I found myself dug deep in the customization menus than my projects. With great power comes greater responsibilities. (Somewhat). See More

PerseveringBelobog's Experience

Fix the program name: "CudaText" casing. "Minimap plugin available"? Minimap is built in! See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux, BSD

License:MPL-2.0

Bracket Matching:Yes

Top Pro

Light weight

Relative low resource consumption compared to Electron based alternatives. See More

Top Con

Some gliches can be seen.

It can be a user error or some colors weren't playing with each other nicely. But my configured string color would start flickering when editing it. See More

Top Pro

Many programming languages supported for syntax highlighting

About ~180 programming languages supported at the time of writing either built-in or can be added easily with the addon manager. See More

Top Pro

Developer willing to listen to suggestions

New versions are released often and the dev is willing to include (reasonable) suggestions. See More

Top Pro

Sublime text's Customization on steroids

The overwhelming native GUI based customization is very much appreciated. You can pretty much customize anything from the editor, the smallest to the biggest GUI elements and to the individual syntax elements. See More

Top Pro

Minimap plugin available

Top Pro

Package for Linux ARM available

Top Pro

Addon manager

Useful built-in addon manager. See More

Top Pro

Addons can be developed in Python

Visual Studio Code

Top Pro

Huge community behind it

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

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux

License:MIT, Proprietary (official builds)

Bracket Matching:Yes

Multi Language Support:Yes

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

Is not an IDE, is a text editor

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

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

Fast and lightweight

Top Con

Slow launch time

Than it's competitors, e.g. Sublime Text. See More

Top Pro

Integrated debugger and version control

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

Top Con

Very bad auto import

Top Pro

Integrated terminal

There's no need to press alt+tab to go to a terminal: it is directly integrated into the editor. 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

Different keyboard shortcuts between Windows, Mac and Linux

Some very useful shortcuts has different mappings in different OS, which will drive crazy cross platform users. Still, remapping can be done manually. See More

Top Pro

Extensions (aka plugins) are written in JavaScript

Extensions are written in either Typescript or JavaScript. See More

Top Pro

Great performance

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

Extendable through plugins

Visual Studio Code comes fairly complete out of the box, but there are many plugins available to extend its functionality. 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 Pro

Monthly update cycle

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 Pro

Libre/open source

Released under the MIT License. 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

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 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

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

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

Good support for Python and C++

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

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

Good support for new Emmet syntax

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 Pro

High fidelity C# plugin

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

Atom

Top Pro

Free and open-source

Atom is free, open source, and written in C++, LESS, and CoffeeScript. See More

Top Con

Eventually gets very slow

Runs on the chrome webkit engine, hence works similar to a browser. This makes it take up a lot of RAM makes it run slow as you accumulate plugins on it. Recent versions are much better at memory management See More

Shane Knysh's Experience

Atom is the most direct replacement of Sublime as a supercharged text editor. However using Sublime or Atom as an IDE is better replaced by Visual Studio Code. See More

Specs

Platforms:Microsoft Windows®, macOS, Linux

Bracket Matching:Yes (plugin)

Multi Language Support:Yes

Top Pro

Extendable with packages

Top Con

Requires lots of resources to run

Top Pro

Command palette built in

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

Minimap support

Top Con

Very slow start up

Atom is very slow to start up, which is a big disadvantage if you are accustomed to launching and closing the text editor to make quick changes on your files. See More

Top Pro

Multi-cursor editing

Top Con

Very LARGE

138MB for the Windows installer of a text editor is excessively large. See More

Top Pro

Built-in package management

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

Top Con

Does not support multi-user environment

On Windows it does not allow to select where to install - instead it installs silently to the user's %APPDATA% directory and consequently is bound to the user. See More

Top Pro

Extensive list of packages

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

Top Con

Has difficulty with large text files

Tends to crash or hang with large >(10MB) text files, making it less useful as a general text editor. See More

Top Pro

Multiplatform

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

Top Pro

Themes

You can theme and customize Atom to your liking. 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 Pro

Embedded Git control

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

Top Pro

Allows for instant file switching

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

Top Pro

Vim plugin turns Atom into a modernized vim

Top Pro

HiDPI support

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

Spacemacs

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

Beginner-friendly

A menu system for all key bindings helps to discover functionality. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux, BSD

License:GPL-3.0-or-later

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

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

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

Easily extendable

Many pre configured packages (layers) available. See More

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

Top Pro

Built-in plugin manager

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

Community-driven configuration

Spacemacs is the biggest community-driven Emacs starter-kit. 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 delayed auto-loading of packages in unpredictable order, different modes for different file types, 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

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

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 Pro

Cross-platform

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

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

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

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

Manage many code bases easily

Top Pro

Can work in terminal mode

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

Daemon support

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

Fast-paced development

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

Emacs

Top Con

Key bindings are Emacs specific

Requires to memorise a lot of new key bindings with control keys. 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

Specs

Platforms:Unix-like, macOS, Windows, Cygwin

License:GPL-3.0-or-later

Bracket Matching:Yes

Multi Language Support:Yes

Top Con

Learning curve is long

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

Top Pro

Works in terminal or as a GUI application

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

Top Con

Sometimes the extensibility can distract you from your actual work

If you ever want to lose half a day, start by tweaking your .spacemacs config file. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

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

Top Con

Takes a lot of effort to configure to fit your needs

It definitely can be configured (and even programmed) according to anyone's habits, needs and preferences. For example, imagine a text editor which can handle typesetting and displaying English, Russian, Japanese and Sanskrit text, supporting LaTeX publishing workflow, Common Lisp development workflow, Javascript development workflow, writing down thoughts and to-do tasks and also having a full-featured command line. But you will have to configure/program it, and it'll in no way be either fast or pleasurable. See More

Top Pro

Provides org-mode

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

Top Con

Hard customization

For customization, you need to learn Lisp. See More

Top Pro

It's also an IDE

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

Top Con

User interface is terrible

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

Top Pro

Keyboard-focused, mouse-free editing

Emacs can be controlled entirely with the keyboard. See More

Top Con

Documentation is not beginner-friendly

Although lots of good built-in documentation _exists_, it can take using Emacs for four years as a primary editor and still not be able to figure out how to actually make use of it, and then rely completely on Google / StackOverflow for help. See More

Top Pro

Vi keybindings through Evil mode

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

Top Con

Keyboard combinations can be confusing for new users

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

Top Pro

Free

Licensed under GNU GPL. See More

Top Pro

Lisp customizations

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

Top Pro

Integrates planning in your development process

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

Top Pro

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

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

Top Pro

Has been widely used for a long time

Top Pro

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

Review the "Emacs Rocks" video. 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

Vim

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

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

Clinton's Experience

Vim's macros are the most powerful of any text editor I've used. It is also easy to extend Vim using Vim Script. I am also more productive using Vim than any other text editor since I never have to move my hands off the keyboard. Emacs is able to do this too, but Emacs' chording gives me repetitive stress injuries. See More

Specs

Platforms:Linux, macOS, Windows, Cygwin

License:Vim License

Extension language:Vim

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

Free and open-source software

Vim is open-source, GPL-compatible charityware. 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

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

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

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

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

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

User must remember commands instead of point at them in a menu

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

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

Has been supported for a long time and will be supported for many years to come

Top Con

Outdated UI

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

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

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

Difficult to copy, paste, and delete

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

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 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 Pro

Works on Android

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 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

Kate

Top Pro

Fast and minimaistic

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

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux, BSD

License:LGPL-2.0-or-later, MIT

Collaborative editing:No

Top Pro

Vi entry mode

Kate has a vi entry mode. See More

Top Pro

Syntax highlighting

Kate supports syntax highlighting for over 180 languages, from Assembler to Zsh See More

Top Pro

By far one of the best and lightest text editors.

Notepads alternative. (for the windows users) See More

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 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

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

Geany

Top Pro

Light and fast

Geany is very lightweight thanks to the smaller offering of features. See More

Top Con

No 64-bit version on Windows available

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux

License:GPL-2.0-only

Bracket Matching:Yes

Multi Language Support:Yes

Top Pro

Simple project management

Top Con

Windows installer not digitally signed

Top Pro

Cross platform

Geany is a cross platform editor, very similar to Notepad++ in Windows. See More

Top Pro

Actively developed Open Source

Which usually means it will remain free of charge. 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

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

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 Pro

Build in terminal

Press F5 and code will run without the need to switch between windows. See More

Notepad ++

Top Pro

Fast

Very short start-up time, no delays during use. See More

Top Con

Windows only

There is (currently) no version which runs on any other operating system than Windows. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows

License:GPL-3.0-or-later

Bracket Matching:Yes

Multi Language Support:Yes

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

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

No Vim emulator

Top Pro

Split screen

The user can open and edit files in multiple screens within the editor window. See More

Top Con

Plugins

Although there are quite a lot of them, not nearly as much as for Sublime Text. 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

User defined language syntax support

You can define your own custom syntax highlighting rules (or add support for others) . 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

Top Pro

Easy to use and admin

Very easy to use and personalize. 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 Pro

Large files

Handles large files (10+ MB) better than Sublime. 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 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 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 Pro

Extendable via plugins

A list of hundreds of plugins is maintained. See More

Top Pro

Bookmark using mouse

Simply click the line gutter to toggle a bookmark, then use (Shift)F2 to switch between bookmarks. See More

NetBeans

Top Pro

JMeter benchmarking tool support

Top Con

Development has stalled dramatically

It went down from two releases a year with minor bug-fix releases to one release and no fixes. There seem to be fewer features added per release as well. There is no activity in the plugin community. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux

Bracket Matching:Yes

Multi Language Support:Yes

Auto Complete:Yes

Top Pro

Supports Smarty

Supports Smarty Template Engine right out of the box. See More

Top Con

Slows down occasionally

The Netbeans IDE is known to take a large memory as compared to other lighter IDE's available on the market. Slowdowns can decrease productivity and cause frustration. See More

Top Pro

Powerful debugging and performance optimization

Netbeans not only debugs your code, and points out errors but also gives you hints on which sections of your code could be further optimized. See More

Top Pro

Less and Sass Compiler support

Top Pro

ApiGen and PHPDoc support

Supports documentation generation through ApiGen and PHPDoc. See More

Top Pro

Bower support

Top Pro

Linux terminal inside IDE

You can run Linux terminal inside the IDE. See More

Top Pro

Supports Twig templates

NetBeans provides code completion and documentation for all Twig elements. See More

Top Pro

Supports community plugins

NetBeans can be extended beyond the basic tool that you get out of the box through community made custom plugins. See More

Top Pro

ApiGen support

ApiGen allows automatically generating documentation from specifically formatted comments. It's easy to use, supports traits, allows fuzzy searching for classes and highlighting docblocks using Markdown. See More

Top Pro

FTP/SFTP synchronization

Supports synchronization with projects stored remotely through FTP or SFTP. See More

Top Pro

Free, open source, and cross-platform

NetBeans is a free, GPL-licensed IDE. It can run on any computer with a Java virtual machine. If a computer has a Java virtual machine (JVM), Netbeans can run on it. Netbeans can, therefore, run on a variety of operating systems such as Windows, *nix, and Mac OS. Being open source means that developers can contribute changes to the code to have the IDE better serve them. See More

Top Pro

Free, open source, and cross-platform

NetBeans is a free, GPL-licensed IDE. It can run on any computer with a Java virtual machine. If a computer has a Java virtual machine (JVM), Netbeans can run on it. Netbeans can, therefore, run on a variety of operating systems such as Windows, *nix, and Mac OS. Being open source means that developers can contribute changes to the code to have the IDE better serve them. See More

Top Pro

Composer commands inside IDE

The most used composer commands can be done directly from IDE. See More

Top Pro

PHPUnit support

PHPUnit is a testing framework. You can create test classes, run and see the code coverage directly from IDE interface. See More

Top Pro

Multiple revision control system integration

Has built-in support for the most popular revision control systems See More

Top Pro

Frameworks support

Supports Symfony1, Symfony2,Yii2 & Zend frameworks. See More

BBEdit

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

macOS only

Not available on Windows or Linux like Sublime Text. See More

Specs

License:Proprietary

Collaborative editing:No

Supported remote file editing protocols:Yes

Top Pro

Great customer support

The developer is very responsive to bug reports and feature suggestions. 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

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

UltraEdit

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

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux

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 Pro

Responsive company

Whether for feature requests, technical support or license questions, IDM is always quick to respond. See More

Top Pro

Highly flexible

UltraEdit allows you to handle groups of files as a project. 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

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

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

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

Textadept

Top Con

Configuration can be difficult

There is a lot of documentation but configuring Textadept can be a challenge at times to do exactly what you want See More

Top Pro

Keyboard driven

There are key bindings for every action which are easily changed. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux, BSD

Top Pro

Unlimited Views - Horizontal/Vertical

You have unlimited horizontal and vertical split views of the same file or different files. See More

Top Pro

Cross-Platform

Runs the same on Windows, OSX and Linux See More

Top Pro

Stable, constant, project

Textadept has regular updates as well as nightly builds: "Textadept has a proven track record, with at least one release every 2 months for 6+ years and no signs of inactivity. Also, as an open-source project, the editor will never fade away." See More

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