When comparing 0xED vs Hex Fiend, the Slant community recommends 0xED for most people. In the question“What are the best hex editors for Mac?” 0xED is ranked 1st while Hex Fiend is ranked 3rd. The most important reason people chose 0xED is:
Fast editing of large files. Instant opening of files of any size. Remains responsive with 1 million+ edits.
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Pros
Pro Responsive
Fast editing of large files. Instant opening of files of any size. Remains responsive with 1 million+ edits.
Pro Small memory footprint
Hex Fiend does not keep your files in memory. You won’t dread launching or working with Hex Fiend even on low-RAM machines.
Pro Works with huge files
Hex Fiend can handle as big a file as you’re able to create. It’s been tested on files as large as 118 GB.
Pro Binary compare / diff
Hex Fiend can show the differences between files, taking into account insertions or deletions.
Pro Fast & efficient saving
Hex Fiend knows not to waste time overwriting the parts of your files that haven’t changed, and never needs temporary disk space.
Pro Insert, delete, rearrange
Hex Fiend does not limit you to in-place changes like some hex editors.
Pro Fast
Open a huge file, scroll around, copy and paste, all instantly. Find what you’re looking for with fast searching.
Pro Free and open source
Hex Fiend is licensed under a permissive BSD-style license.
Pro Data Inspector
Interpret data as integer or floating point, signed or unsigned, big or little endian...
Pro Embeddable
It’s really easy to incorporate Hex Fiend’s hex or data views into your app. Its permissive BSD-style license won’t burden you.
Cons
Con Current version 1.14 crashes
Crashes on macOS 10.13 (High Sierra)
Con No longer updated
The website states that the app is no longer in development
Con doesnt work
Con Files can't be saved with a .dat extension
Trying to save files with .dat extension gives the following error:
You cannot save this document with extension “.dat” at the end of the name. The required extension is “.(null)”.