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TextEdit is the default text editor in macOS, and it’s just as barebones as the default text editor in Windows, Notepad. Naturally, many Mac users sooner or later look for an alternative, and they often stumble upon Notepad++.
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But 10 best text editors for Mac OS are must for high-end programming. If one wants to create software and apps that require complex coding, it becomes intermediate necessary to look for the best text editor for programming on Mac. Best Text Editors for macOS. Note: In this article, we are focusing on the best text editors for coding but if you are looking for a text editor for your writing purposes, you can check out our article on the best writing apps for Mac. Sublime Text 3. Sublime Text is probably one of the most famous text editors available for Mac and for all the right reasons.
What Is Notepad++?
Notepad++ is basically what would happen if you were to inject Notepad with steroids and forced it to work out. It supports several programming languages and features syntax highlighting, syntax folding, PCRE (Perl Compatible Regular Expression) search/replace, auto-completion, multi-document editing, WYSIWYG printing, zoom in and zoom out, bookmarks, macro recording and playback, and more.
Notepad++ is free and open source, first released in 2003 by Don Ho. It’s written in C++ and based on powerful editing component Scintilla. This free open source library supports many features to make code editing easier in addition to error indicators, line numbering in the margin, as well as line markers such as code breakpoints.
Because of its extensive features, support for 84 languages, and free price, Notepad++ was voted as the most used text editor worldwide with 34.7 percent of 26,086 respondents on Stack Overflow claiming to use it daily. It has also won a number of prestigious awards including the “Best Programming Text Editor for Windows” award from Lifehacker in 2011 and 2014.
Why Is Notepad++ Mac Not Available?
Unfortunately, it’s impossible to download Notepad++ for Mac. You might think that Notepad++ Mac isn’t available because it’s also not possible to download Notepad for Mac, but that’s not the real reason why.
Notepad++ relies extensively on Win32 API, the 32-bit application programming interface for modern versions of Windows. Win32 API consists of many components, including things like file systems, devices, processes, threads, and error handling. It’s also responsible for that instantly recognizable Windows look and feel that many long-term users of the operating system find so appealing. In short, without Win32 API, there’s no Notepad++. At least not without a major rewriting of the application.
If Notepad++ were a commercial project, there’s a chance that it would make a sense to develop and maintain a separate version for macOS (and Linux), but it’s free and open source, so the motivation is limited. Porting Notepad++ to another operating system would also break the compatibility with most plugins, essentially fragmenting the Notepad++ community.
How to Run Notepad++ On Mac?
Because of extensively Notepad++ relies on Win32 API, there are two possible ways how to run it on macOS: rewrite it so that it doesn’t rely on Win32 API anymore, or provide it the necessary API. We’ve already explained why the former is unlikely to happen anytime soon, but the latter is already possible using virtual machines and emulators.
Install Notepad++ on Mac Using Wine
Wine is a recursive backronym for Wine Is Not an Emulator. What is Wine then? A free and open-source compatibility layer whose goal is to emulate the Windows runtime environment by translating Windows system calls into POSIX-compliant system calls. It also recreates the directory structure of Windows systems and provides alternative implementations of Windows system libraries, services, and other components.
As you can see here, Notepad++ runs well in Wine, especially its earlier versions, which rate rated Gold and Platinum. Wine’s rating system is designed to assist users by giving a rating based on other users’ experience:
To install Wine on macOS, you need macOS 10.8 or higher, and you must set Gatekeeper to NOT block unsigned packages. If you meet these prerequisites, you can continue by following the steps below:
Install Notepad++ on Mac Using VMware
The main advantage of running Notepad++ (or any other application) using Wine is that it runs side-by-side with native macOS applications. But due to how Wine works, minor bugs are to be expected. A bug here and there may be acceptable if you use Notepad++ only to occasionally edit a text file, but they can quickly make Notepad++ unusable for software developers or anyone who wants to use it extensively.
That’s where virtualization software solutions such as VMware Fusion come in. With it, you can set up a virtual Windows machine on your Mac computer and use the virtual machine to execute any Windows software you want. The virtual machine can even share the same clipboard with your Mac, allowing you to effortlessly copy and paste text and images to and from Notepad++ across operating systems.
To get started with VMware Fusion, we recommend you this detailed tutorial from VMware where you can learn everything you need to know about running Windows applications on Intel-based Mac computers. Of course, you’ll also need a copy of Windows.
3 Best Alternatives to Notepad++ for Mac Users
While it’s possible to run Notepad++ on macOS using Wine or VMware, neither approach is without its downsides, which is why many people look for alternatives to Notepad++ for Mac computers instead. One important reason is stability. There’s nothing worse than editing an important text file for an hour or two only to have your text editor suddenly crash, causing you to lose all your progress.
Unless you have a data recovery solution such as Disk Drill installed on your computer, your chances of recovering your lost data are slim. Disk Drill makes data recovery of over 200 file formats a matter of a single button press, and it comes with handy disk tools to help you keep your data organized and protected.
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To be as save as you can be, we recommend you have Disk Drill installed on your computer and consider one of the following alternatives to Notepad for Mac. Because the alternatives we’ve selected are native, mature Mac applications, their stability is guaranteed.
BracketsFree Code Editor For Mac
Brackets is a modern text editor made with the needs of web developers in mind. It has a live preview feature that allows you to instantly see changes to CSS and HTML files in your web browser of choice, it can with your LESS and SCSS files, and it can show you all the CSS selectors with that ID in an inline window so you can work on your code side-by-side without any popups. Brackets is open source, free, and as sleek as a macOS application should be. Because of how lightweight Brackets is, it runs extremely well even on older Macs, making it our favorite Notepad++ Mac alternative for anyone who edits text on a regular basis.
Textmate
Textmate is a versatile text editor that brings Apple’s approach to operating systems into the world of text editors, as stated by its developers. It has many features, including the ability to search and replace text, auto-indent for common actions, clipboard history, dynamic outline for working with multiple files, file tabs when working with projects, foldable code blocks, and more. Despite its extensive features, Textmate remains highly accessible even to casual computers users who only edit text now and then. Using its powerful snippets, macros, and unique scoping system, Textmate can provide features that even a language specific IDE lacks.
Sublime Text
Sublime Text is a feature-packed text editor that runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux. It’s designed for code and prose alike. Sublime Text supports splits editing, customizable key bindings, menus, snippets, macros, completions, and it’s built from custom components, providing for unmatched responsiveness. Sublime Text is also free to download, but a license must be purchased for continued use. A single personal license costs $80, which is not an insignificant amount considering how many alternative text editors for Mac are available free of charge. But the fact that Sublime Text is among the most popular text editors across all operating systems is perhaps the best testament to its capabilities.
Windows and macOS come pre-installed with a program that can open and edit text files. It's called TextEdit on Macs and Notepad on Windows, but neither are quite as advanced as some of the third-party applications that are available today.
Most of the text editors below need to be downloaded to your computer before you can use them, but all of them provide their own unique set of features that set them apart from the default software programs that come with Windows and Mac.
Best Text Editor For PythonWhy Use a Text Editor?
A text editor lets you open a file as a text document, something that can be useful for a number of reasons:
If you just need a super quick way to strip the formatting from some text, try this online text editor. To make a .TXT file online without downloading a program, try Edit Pad.
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Notepad++What We Like
Notepad++ is the best alternative notepad application for Windows computers. It’s really easy to use for basic users who just need a text file opener or editor but also includes some really advanced features for those interested.
This program uses tabbed browsing which means you can open multiple documents at once and they'll display at the top of Notepad++ as tabs. While each tab represents its own file, Notepad++ can interact with all of them at once to do things like compare files for differences and search for or replace text.
Probably the easiest way to edit files with Notepad++ is to right-click the file and choose Edit with Notepad++ from the context menu.
This program can open nearly any file as a text document and supports lots of helpful plugins. It also includes a really handy text search/replace function, highlights syntax automatically, auto-completes words, and is the best offline text file converter.
The Notepad++ Find option lets you search for words with criteria like backward direction, match whole word only, match case, and wrap around.
Also supported is bookmarking, macros, auto-backup, multi-page searching, resumed sessions, read-only mode, encoding conversions, and the ability to search for words on Wikipedia and quickly open the document in your web browser.
Notepad++ also supports plugins to do things like auto-save open documents, merge all the text from open documents into one main file, align programming code, monitor open documents to refresh them as they change, copy and paste more than one item from the clipboard at once, and lots more.
Notepad++ lets you save text documents to a huge variety of formats like TXT, CSS, ASM, AU3, BASH, BAT, HPP, CC, DIFF, HTML, REG, HEX, JAVA, SQL, VBS, and many others.
Notepad++ works with Windows only, both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. You can also grab a portable version of Notepad++ from the download page; one is in the ZIP format and the other is a 7Z file.
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BracketsWhat We Like
What We Don't Like
Brackets is a free text editor that's primarily meant for web designers, but can of course be used by anyone to view or edit a text document.
The interface is extremely clean and modern and feels really easy to use despite all of its advanced settings. In fact, nearly all of the options are hidden away from plain site so that it's easy for anyone to use, which also provides an extremely open UI for editing.
Code writers might like that Brackets highlights syntax, can split the screen to edit more than one document simultaneously, lets you click one No Distractions button for a really simple interface, and supports lots of keyboard shortcuts so that you can quickly indent, duplicate, move between lines, toggle line and block comments, show or hide code hints, and more.
You can quickly change the file type you're working with to instantly change syntax highlighting rules, as well as change the encoding of the file if you need to.
If you're editing a CSS or HTML file, you can enable the Live Preview option to watch the page update in real time in your web browser as you make changes to the file.
The Working Files area is where you can open all of the files that belong to a single project, and quickly move between them without leaving Brackets.
Some examples of plugins you can use in Brackets includes one to support W3C validation, Ungit to make it easier to use Git, an HTML tag menu, and Python tools.
Brackets comes installed with both a dark and a light theme that you can change at any time, but there are dozens of others that you can install through the Extensions Manager.
Brackets is available as a DEB, MSI, and DMG file for use in Linux, Windows, and macOS, respectively.
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Komodo EditWhat We Like
What We Don't Like
Komodo Edit is another free text editor with a super clear and minimal design that still manages to pack some awesome features.
Various view modes are included so that you can quickly open or close specific windows. One is “Focus Mode” to hide all of the open windows and just display the editor, and the others show/hide things like folders, the syntax checker results, and notifications.
This program makes it very easy to open text documents even while one is currently open. At the very top of the program is the path to the currently opened file, and you can select the arrow next to any folder to get a list of files, any of which will open as a new tab in Komodo Edit if you select it.
The folder views off to the side of Komodo Edit are also really useful since they let you browse through the file system as well as create virtual projects that link folders and files together to better organize what you need to work on.
A unique feature in Komodo Edit is the area at the upper-left side of the program that lets you not only undo and redo like most programs, but also go back to the previous cursor location, as well as go forward to return to where you just were.
Here are some other Komodo Edit features worth noting:
This text editor works with Windows, Mac, and Linux.
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Visual Studio CodeWhat We Like
Best Text Editor For Mac Os XWhat We Don't Like
Visual Studio Code is a free text editor that's used primarily as a source code editor.
Mac text editor for programmers. The program is extremely minimal and even has a 'Zen Mode' option one click away that immediately hides all the menus and windows, and maximizes the program to fill the whole screen.
Best Text Editor For Mac
The tabbed browsing interface seen with other text editors is supported in Visual Studio Code as well, which makes it really easy to work with multiple documents at once.
You can also open entire folders of files at once if you're working on a project, and even save the project for easy retrieval later.
However, this text editor probably isn't ideal unless you plan to use it for programming purposes. There are entire sections dedicated to debugging code, viewing command outputs, managing source control providers, and even using a built-in Command Prompt.
The settings are also not as intuitive to adjust since you have to modify them using the text editor; the settings are entirely text-based.
Here are some features you might find useful in this program:
Text Editor For Mac
Visual Studio Code can be installed on Windows, Mac, and Linux computers.
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