Add to Chrome
Add to Edge
Add to Firefox
Add to Opera
Add to Brave
Add to SafariWhen comparing Textastic vs nano, the Slant community recommends nano for most people. In the question“What are the best programming text editors?” nano is ranked 14th while Textastic is ranked 45th. The most important reason people chose nano is:
Nano includes only the bare minimum of functionality needed to edit documents making it very simple.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro iOS version available
Pro Supports 80 source code and markup languages
Textastic has support for several script and markup languages.
Pro Very fast
There's no need for hundreds of modules to be loaded on every start of Textastic. It's perfect for the fast editing of files.
Pro Supports online sync
Textastic can sync with iCloud documents.
Pro Code completion
Pro Easy to use
Nano includes only the bare minimum of functionality needed to edit documents making it very simple.
Pro Built-in cheat sheet for shortcuts
Shortcuts for common commands are shown at the bottom of the editor.
Pro Available on almost every Linux system as default
Similar to vi (vim), you can find nano on most Unix-like systems (even on Cygwin).
Pro Most of the languages supported
Syntax coloring is available for most of the programming language.
Pro Lightweight and bug free
Very stable editor that never hangs / leaks or crashes.
Cons
Con Mac only
Textastic is for Mac only.
Con Proprietary
Textastic is a proprietary software and needs a license which costs $7.99.
Con Limited feature set
While nano is fine for writing blog posts or doing quick modifications, it's probably not suitable for programmers or someone who needs to work on an editor for an extensive period of time.
Con Uncommon keybindings
Nano uses a strange set of default keybindings, which is totally different than Vim, Emacs, VSCode and Sublime.
