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I come from a Windows background and recently switched to Mac at work. I'm a pretty heavy user of Notepad++ but so far all the good text editors I've found for

by Osiris 15y ago

I come from a Windows background and recently switched to Mac at work. I'm a pretty heavy user of Notepad++ but so far all the good text editors I've found for Mac are shareware. What good free text editors do you recommend on Mac that have similar features, like syntax highlighting, auto-indent, and regular expression support?

user2459 15y ago
gedit: http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/binaries/mac/gedit/3.2/ http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/binaries/mac/gedit/3.2/ text wrangler: http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/download.html http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/download.html redcar: http://redcareditor.com/ http://redcareditor.com/ but you're really not gonna get any better than textmate or sublime text 2
- Torn 15y ago
  Text wrangler is particularly nice.
  - pwelch 15y ago
    Another vote for Text Wrangler. I use Sublime 2 and Texmate a lot but if someone wants a free solution and not interested in Vim or Emacs then I always recommend Text Wrangler. It's from the same people that make BBedit.
jonburs 15y ago
TextWranlger (BBEdit's free version) is one option -- http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/ http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/.
chevas 15y ago
Komodo Edit (the free version - http://www.activestate.com/komodo-edit http://www.activestate.com/komodo-edit, not Komodo IDE). Text Wrangler didn't cut it for me at all and neither did some of the paid editors out there for MAC. Komodo Edit is the only one I found that comes close to handling the syntax highlighting thing properly, not to mention that it is a robust editor. I even tried Coda for a while, but I always prefer Notepad++
sgk284 15y ago
MacVim or Emacs for OS X are both great editors and free. I recommend learning at least one of them. You'll never look back.
mark_up 15y ago
On Windows or Mac, once you go Sublime Text 2, you never go back.
anthonyb 15y ago
Just a note to let mark_up and chevas know that they've been hellbanned. I don't think you're trolls, so I thought I'd let you know (I can't respond to your posts directly).
- mark_up 15y ago
  Thanks. Nobody has -ever- responded to me on HN. Now I know why. Weird that a hackers forum has such little respect for those who wish to participate. Would have been nice to be notified, let alone given a reason.
- irahul 15y ago
  mark_up and chevas: Looking at your comments history, it doesn't look like you post inappropriate comments, and have most likely been banned by mistake. You can make new accounts, but I would suggest getting your current accounts unbanned. A short mail to pg(you can guess the email address) on the lines of "I believe my hn handle http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mark_up http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mark_up is wrongfully banned" does the trick.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
danboarder 15y ago
An excellent free and open source native Mac editor is Fraise, though I'm not sure if it is still maintained, but it still works great in Lion. Another in development is Kod ( http://kodapp.com/ http://kodapp.com/ ) that I've not used much yet. My daily editor now though is Sublime Text 2 (free to try out).
deno 15y ago
Kate from KDESC http://kate-editor.org/about-kate/ http://kate-editor.org/about-kate/ http://mac.kde.org/ http://mac.kde.org/
- dos1 15y ago
  This was the first decent GUI text editor I ever used. Prior to using it I had only ever seen Notepad and pico. I was amazed that you could interact with the terminal right from the app's user interface! To this day I still have a soft spot in my heart for Kate.
locusm 15y ago
Doesn't get better than Sublime Text 2 - cross platform too.
- locusm 15y ago
  oopps - not free though.
  - ripclaw 15y ago
    still worth a mention. been using sublime text 2 since the early beta and bought it almost right away, it's that good. i've been a big notepad++ fun in the past, but since for some now i've been working on both osx and win, it had been a pain to switch between different editors. sublime text 2 is cross platform and supports all kind of extensions. cannot recommend it strongly enough.
    - geoffroy 15y ago
      Yep. The only thing I miss from Notepad++ is the File Compare tool.
sn0wright 15y ago
As already mentioned, TextWrangler is a pretty good free alternative. I used it and liked it enough to support the team by buying BBedit, which I recommend if you're looking to purchase one.
Stratoscope 15y ago
Komodo Edit runs on Mac and Windows and Linux too and is very nice. I use Komodo IDE which adds debuggers and other goodies, but the free version is well worth trying out.
megablast 15y ago
The one thing I miss from windows, Notepad++.
merijnv 15y ago
There is not a lot of incentive to create a free Notepad++-like text editor for OSX. OSX already ships with two excellent free text editors for the commandline (Emacs & vim) and there's GUI versions of both. Any Cocoa/OSX specific GUI editor will suffer from being less powerful, less well tested and less portable (whereas vim/emacs are available on any imaginable platform, allowing you to keep your editing muscle memory).
- Joeri 15y ago
  Vim and emacs are not for everyone. This may come across as sacrilege to some, but I personally don't like keyboard-driven interfaces. I want a mouse-based ui, with shortcuts for the stuff i do often enough. I want to move textblocks via drag and drop. I want to trigger a refactor command by navigating a menu with the mouse. And fundamentally, it's because my memory for remembering keyboard commands isn't good enough. A mouse-driven ui lets me focus on the code, instead of "what was that sequence of keys again?"
  - merijnv 15y ago
    Sure, I'm just pointing out that their existence greatly diminishes the motivation to write a good (free) text editor for OSX. There are plenty of nice GUI editors for OSX, but most (all?) seem to be paid editors. The end result is that you either fork over the money (not entirely unreasonable for a tool you use so often) or learn to work the excellent free editors that exist.
antihero 15y ago
Sublime Text 2, it's cross platform, beautiful, and has wicked shortcuts.
kahawe 15y ago
TextMate gets a lot of love and supports regex: http://macromates.com/ http://macromates.com/
natex 15y ago
Geany is very similar to Notepad++ and is available for MacOSX. http://www.geany.org/Main/About http://www.geany.org/Main/About
noarchy 15y ago
If you don't mind going the Emacs route, there's http://aquamacs.org/ http://aquamacs.org/ It is probably a bit friendlier, out of the box, than vanilla Emacs, at least from an OS X perspective.

by Osiris 15y ago

user2459 15y ago

gedit: http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/binaries/mac/gedit/3.2/ http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/binaries/mac/gedit/3.2/ text wrangler: http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/download.html http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/download.html redcar: http://redcareditor.com/ http://redcareditor.com/ but you're really not gonna get any better than textmate or sublime text 2

Torn 15y ago
Text wrangler is particularly nice.
- pwelch 15y ago
  Another vote for Text Wrangler. I use Sublime 2 and Texmate a lot but if someone wants a free solution and not interested in Vim or Emacs then I always recommend Text Wrangler. It's from the same people that make BBedit.

jonburs 15y ago

TextWranlger (BBEdit's free version) is one option -- http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/ http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/.

chevas 15y ago

Komodo Edit (the free version - http://www.activestate.com/komodo-edit http://www.activestate.com/komodo-edit, not Komodo IDE). Text Wrangler didn't cut it for me at all and neither did some of the paid editors out there for MAC. Komodo Edit is the only one I found that comes close to handling the syntax highlighting thing properly, not to mention that it is a robust editor. I even tried Coda for a while, but I always prefer Notepad++

sgk284 15y ago

MacVim or Emacs for OS X are both great editors and free. I recommend learning at least one of them. You'll never look back.

mark_up 15y ago

On Windows or Mac, once you go Sublime Text 2, you never go back.

anthonyb 15y ago

Just a note to let mark_up and chevas know that they've been hellbanned. I don't think you're trolls, so I thought I'd let you know (I can't respond to your posts directly).

mark_up 15y ago
Thanks. Nobody has -ever- responded to me on HN. Now I know why. Weird that a hackers forum has such little respect for those who wish to participate. Would have been nice to be notified, let alone given a reason.
irahul 15y ago
mark_up and chevas: Looking at your comments history, it doesn't look like you post inappropriate comments, and have most likely been banned by mistake. You can make new accounts, but I would suggest getting your current accounts unbanned. A short mail to pg(you can guess the email address) on the lines of "I believe my hn handle http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mark_up http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mark_up is wrongfully banned" does the trick.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

danboarder 15y ago

An excellent free and open source native Mac editor is Fraise, though I'm not sure if it is still maintained, but it still works great in Lion. Another in development is Kod ( http://kodapp.com/ http://kodapp.com/ ) that I've not used much yet. My daily editor now though is Sublime Text 2 (free to try out).

deno 15y ago

Kate from KDESC http://kate-editor.org/about-kate/ http://kate-editor.org/about-kate/ http://mac.kde.org/ http://mac.kde.org/

dos1 15y ago
This was the first decent GUI text editor I ever used. Prior to using it I had only ever seen Notepad and pico. I was amazed that you could interact with the terminal right from the app's user interface! To this day I still have a soft spot in my heart for Kate.

locusm 15y ago

Doesn't get better than Sublime Text 2 - cross platform too.

locusm 15y ago
oopps - not free though.
- ripclaw 15y ago
  still worth a mention. been using sublime text 2 since the early beta and bought it almost right away, it's that good. i've been a big notepad++ fun in the past, but since for some now i've been working on both osx and win, it had been a pain to switch between different editors. sublime text 2 is cross platform and supports all kind of extensions. cannot recommend it strongly enough.
  - geoffroy 15y ago
    Yep. The only thing I miss from Notepad++ is the File Compare tool.

sn0wright 15y ago

As already mentioned, TextWrangler is a pretty good free alternative. I used it and liked it enough to support the team by buying BBedit, which I recommend if you're looking to purchase one.

Stratoscope 15y ago

Komodo Edit runs on Mac and Windows and Linux too and is very nice. I use Komodo IDE which adds debuggers and other goodies, but the free version is well worth trying out.

megablast 15y ago

The one thing I miss from windows, Notepad++.

merijnv 15y ago

There is not a lot of incentive to create a free Notepad++-like text editor for OSX. OSX already ships with two excellent free text editors for the commandline (Emacs & vim) and there's GUI versions of both. Any Cocoa/OSX specific GUI editor will suffer from being less powerful, less well tested and less portable (whereas vim/emacs are available on any imaginable platform, allowing you to keep your editing muscle memory).

Joeri 15y ago
Vim and emacs are not for everyone. This may come across as sacrilege to some, but I personally don't like keyboard-driven interfaces. I want a mouse-based ui, with shortcuts for the stuff i do often enough. I want to move textblocks via drag and drop. I want to trigger a refactor command by navigating a menu with the mouse. And fundamentally, it's because my memory for remembering keyboard commands isn't good enough. A mouse-driven ui lets me focus on the code, instead of "what was that sequence of keys again?"
- merijnv 15y ago
  Sure, I'm just pointing out that their existence greatly diminishes the motivation to write a good (free) text editor for OSX. There are plenty of nice GUI editors for OSX, but most (all?) seem to be paid editors. The end result is that you either fork over the money (not entirely unreasonable for a tool you use so often) or learn to work the excellent free editors that exist.

antihero 15y ago

Sublime Text 2, it's cross platform, beautiful, and has wicked shortcuts.

kahawe 15y ago

TextMate gets a lot of love and supports regex: http://macromates.com/ http://macromates.com/

natex 15y ago

Geany is very similar to Notepad++ and is available for MacOSX. http://www.geany.org/Main/About http://www.geany.org/Main/About

noarchy 15y ago

If you don't mind going the Emacs route, there's http://aquamacs.org/ http://aquamacs.org/ It is probably a bit friendlier, out of the box, than vanilla Emacs, at least from an OS X perspective.