Spending some time on your iPad, you must have been thinking about using the best code editor for iPad 2020. Code Editor is a bridge between your iPad and the world of apps and documents on the internet. Very useful for writing code, testing it online, and debugging.
Is there a text editor for iPad by which the programmers will be able to write code on an iPad as an alternative to using their desktop or notebooks? Sure, there is – as long as they are equipped with a programmer’s editor that lets them work with HTML or with their favorite programming language.
There’s no shortage of simple text editors and Word-like apps for the iPad. Coders, of course, need (or want) more than that, and there are iOS apps that provide some of the features you want – although there’s no guarantee you’ll find an app that has the right feature mix. In general, these tools all include a way to download-and-upload code, and some can sync files across systems. Some editors include syntax highlighting, perhaps even local preview capability.
But be prepared to set your expectations differently for a tablet environment. Don’t look for features like auto-indent support for lots of languages, or embedded command windows to be standard; be pleasantly surprised when you find such capabilities. Accept the limitations of these tools, such as only one foreground window, poorer task switching, and no mouse. Certainly, none of these is a fully integrated development environment.
This article will share a list of some best text editors for iPad, which you can use freely to get your job done easily.
Best for Minimalists: Javascript Anywhere
If all you want is a lightweight, free app for text-based development without all the bells and whistles, check out Javascript Anywhere. Despite the name, it supports HTML and CSS editing as well as Javascript via a simple toggle on the editing screen.
Preview your code via the internal browser, and import images and projects from the web so you don’t have to start from scratch. Files can be synced using Dropbox, or shared via email. Other than a few interface customizations and project templates, there’s not much more to the app than that—the developer deliberately keeps it “minimal forever.”
You may want something with a few more features if you find yourself writing HTML all the time, but for quick coding on the go, it’s well worth having Javascript Anywhere installed on your iPad.
Best for Speedy Coding: GoCoEdit
Looking for a development-focused text editor that can help you get more done quicker? GoCoEdit has syntax highlighting support for dozens of languages including HTML, and a range of useful features that make coding faster and more enjoyable on iOS devices.
Time-saving features like code hints, auto-indent, and automatic closing of brackets help speed up code entry, and powerful search and replace tools make large-scale changes much faster. The app also adds an extra row of keys to the onscreen keyboard, with custom text snippets and a “trackpad” for more accurate text selection. Common desktop shortcuts like Cmd-C for copy and Cmd-V for paste are also available.
GoCoEdit supports working offline and directly on the server, and syncs with Dropbox and other cloud storage services. You can also upload/download via FTP/SFTP. A preview browser, complete with Javascript console, is built into the app.
Best Free Option: HTML & HTML5 Editor
While HTML & HTML5 Editor doesn’t boast as many features as paid apps like Textastic or GoCoEdit, this simple editor does a good job of covering the basics—and you can’t argue with the price.
The app has syntax highlighting and code autocompletion, supporting use in “landscape mode,” which is preferred by many developers. A preview function is included, along with a safety net—as well as undo/redo functions, and an automatic backup is created whenever you start editing a file.
A basic file editor is built-in, letting you move, delete, rename, and more. Options for moving files off the iPad are limited, with email being the most flexible, but you can at least create and extract zip files to make dealing with multiple files easier.
This app is a good option for iPad owners with basic HTML editing requirements. Since it’s free, HTML & HTML5 Editor is well worth checking out to see if it meets your needs before shelling out on a paid alternative with extra features.
Best Premium Editor: Code Editor by Panic
Code Editor By Panic’s tagline is “All you need to code websites” and it tries hard to reach that lofty goal. With syntax highlighting for over two dozen languages including HTML and CSS, a context-based row of keys above the on-screen keyboard, custom reusable code snippets, and a special magnifying mode for accurate cursor movement, code entry is about as fast and accurate as it gets on the iPad.
There’s a powerful file manager built-in, wildcard search and replace, tab support for fast switching between documents, and an SSH terminal to give you full control over your server environment.
You pay a premium for Code Editor, but it has several features you won’t find elsewhere as well as regular major updates.
Best for Powerful Features: Textastic Code Editor 9
If there’s a particular feature you’re looking for from an iPad HTML editor, there’s a good chance Textastic will have it. With syntax highlighting for 80+ languages, code completion for HTML, CSS, PHP, and Javascript, and an extra row of keys with relevant characters, entering code is fast and accurate.
You can connect to Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox, and (with a bit of work) Git repositories, or your own servers via FTP/FTPS/SFTP or WebDAV. Unlike many other code editors on iPad, there’s full support for landscape mode, split views, and multiple tabs. There’s also a built-in JavaScript console and SSH command window, plus access to a local file system so you can build the structure of the site on your iPad, then easily upload it. Both local and remote HTML previewing is built in.
Reasonably-priced and well-regarded by its users, Textastic Code Editor is an excellent option for professional
Code To Go
Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later
Features:
- Write, save and load code locally, without connectivity; with connectivity, load from and save to DropBox. “You can also save and later load different files for each language.”
- Supports about 50 languages, including awk, C, C#, C++, LISP, Forth, Java, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, SQL, and Visual Basic .NET.
- Lets you run your code and see the results on Sphere Research Labs’s Ideone.com site.
- “Add files directly from your computer to CodeToGo, as well as exporting CodeToGo files to your computer” (using the app syncing page in iTunes).
- “Adds an extra row of commonly used keys to the default keyboard. You can also customize this extra row by touching the “Settings” button at the top right of the initial language screen.” If you’re using a Bluetooth keyboard, the special keys — which you can edit via the app’s SETTINGS — show up as a row of keys at the bottom of the screen.
Price: $2.99
Code Monkey
Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.1.3 or later
Code Monkey has a UML editor in a “programmers notebook” paradigm, with class diagram support presently, an RPN capable programmer’s calculator, a regular expression cheat sheet, and a design patterns reference. The company explains, “The UML editor supports multiple class diagrams, classes, dependency, derivation, and realization relationships between them. Classes and relationships can have names (shown on diagrams), stereotypes, and descriptions (names and stereotypes shown). Diagrams can be emailed as PDFs and saved and PNGs to the pictures on the device. Note that this is not a full UML editor.”
Price: $1.99
Codosaurus
Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later. Codosaurus features include:
- Highlighted syntax for small files
- Coding optimized keyboard
- Language support for TXT, HTML, CSS, PHP, JS, XML, HTACCESS, Python, ASP, ASPX, Ruby, SQL, PHTML, TPL, CSV, INI, and INC files
- Open and view PDF, DOC, XLS, PPT, RTF, LOG, and image files
- Create a full working jQuery library
- Templates for HTML, HTML5, CSS-Screen, CSS-Print, PHP, XML, and a jQuery Library
- Latin1 and Unicode Encoding.
Note: I could access and see filenames in one of my shell accounts, but wasn’t able to open anything. I might have been doing something wrong, however.
Price: $5.99 (Coda also offers a free Lite version of Codasaurus; see the developer reviews here.)
CoffeeScript At Once
Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod touch (third generation), iPod touch (fourth generation), and iPad. Requires iOS 4.3 or later.
CoffeeScript At Once bills itself as a “minimal web development environment,” and was originally meant for the iPhone, with goals including reducing the amount of typing you have to do.
Features:
- Editing HTML, CSS, JavaScript (only one file per project)
- Allows external libraries like jQuery
- Custom keyboard for input symbols
- Preview by internal browser
- View generated html source
- Downloading HTML, CSS, JavaScript and libraries
- Can send email and post to Gist (Github).
Price: Free
Diet Coda
Also see the company’s screen video demo
Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later.
Diet Coda is based on Panic’s Coda web code editor for macOS X. Its features include:
- Remote-only editing: edit documents right on your server or staging server.
- Syntax highlighting for HTML, CSS, JS, PHP (more promised)
- FTP, SFTP
- “Super-Loupe” to improve cursor positioning.
- Find and replace including “wildcard” token
- A contextual keyboard that changes which special characters show on the virtual keyboard.
- Clips, let you “Insert chunks of code with a single tap.”
When using a Bluetooth keyboard, Diet Coda presents a row of special characters at the bottom of the screen. As the most expensive app in this round-up, Diet Coda ought to be among the best of the lot – if price bears any relationship to quality and features.
Price: $19.99
Edhita: Open source text editor for iPad
Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 3.2 or later.
Edhita is an open-source text editor. Features include:
- Create, rename directories and files
- Download files via HTTP or FTP, upload via FTP
- View files in built-in browser
- Send files via email.
Edhita can pop up a row of special keyboard characters at the bottom of the screen. To enter FTP info and other configuration, you have to go to the Edhita entry in the iOS’ settings.
Price: Free
Editor for iPad
Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 3.2 or later.
Features include:
- Syntax highlighting for HTML, CSS, JavaScript.
- Preview webpages
- 50+ text patterns for HTML, CSS3, and JavaScript are included.
- Upload/downloads via WiFi connection with desktop computer. If you upload as zip files, selecting the zip file automatically extracts the files.
- Syntax highlighting based on file suffix/extension
- Allows file export to other apps, working with an FTP app, e.g., to FRP, or to Amazon S3 servers.
Thanks to its vanilla name (keyword-wise) combined with the App Store’s inexplicable, annoying, aggravating, not-ready-for-prime-time lack of an alphabetic sort on results, you may find it difficult to impossible to find this app. Fortunately, including the developer name in the search gets it in one: use “editor yboom” (tsk!).
Price: $3.99
For i: Code Editor for the iPad
Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 3.2 or later.
Features include:
- Syntax highlighting for C, C#, Objective C, Java, HTML, PHP, Ruby, Python, SQL, and other languages
- Built-in web server for transferring files
- Virtual keyboard includes useful keys; also, shortcuts usable from Bluetooth keyboards
- “Take snapshots of your files and revert back in any time.”
When using a Bluetooth keyboard, For i pops up a special-characters row of keys at the bottom of the display. I’m not seeing a lot of features. I found no way to change the font size, which is very small.
Price: $9.99
Gusto Code Editor and FTP Client
Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later.
Gusto offers both this $9.99 Code Editor and FTP Client, and the $4.99 Gusto Mobile, an integrated FTP/SFTP client and code editor for web development. It’s not clear what the differences are.
Oddly, in landscape mode, many of the pop-ups are often – but not consistently – in portrait orientation, even when my iPad was still in the landscape. In portrait orientation, the reverse doesn’t seem to occur. Tsk.
Gusto lets you open multiple documents in tabs, an important feature has given iOS’s “one-foreground-app-only” display.
Features include:
- Project-driven workflow
- Syntax highlighting for ActionScript, ASP, C, C++, C#, ColdFusion, CSS, HTML, Java, Javascript, JSP, LaTeX, Lisp, Objective-C, PDF, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, SGML, SQL, VB and XML.
- Tabbed Editor
- Line numbering
- Hard and soft line breaks
- Built-in File Transfer Client supports FTP, SFTP, FTPS, and Dropbox
- Toolbar for frequently used keys
- Built-in Local and Remote Site Previews
Price: $9.99
JsAnywhere (a.k.a. “JavaScript Anywhere”)
Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later.
“JavaScript Anywhere” features allegedly include:
- edit JavaScript, HTML, CSS.
- open an HTML file, including its CSS and JS files, in a built-in Web browser.
- Store by sending as attached email files.
I say “allegedly” because, while the iTunes entry shows working examples and reviewer comments who are using it, I couldn’t get anywhere to do anything beyond creating a New Project (giving it a name). Beyond that, nothing, other than continuing to show me a NetFlix banner ad towards the top. Perhaps you will have better luck. Otherwise, you’re not out any money, just the time you’ve spent trying it.
Price: Free
Koder Code Editor
Also, see the company’s YouTube video.
Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later.
Features include:
- Syntax highlighting for PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XML, Ruby, SQL, Python, ColdFusion, ActionScript3, Perl, Java, JavaFX, C#, C++, Delphi, Visual Basic, Diff, Erlang, Groovy, Powershell, Latex, Scala, and Shell
- A snippet manager
- Tabbed editing
- Find and replace code
- Previewer browser with Firebug support and a View Source function
- (S)FTP Connection, FTPS/FTPES, Dropbox, iDisk, Local iPad folder
- iTunes File Sharing Support
Price: $5.99
Conclusion
If you are looking for the best code editor for iPad, you are in the right place. These high-quality text editors below can help you create diversified texts on various devices. They are conspicuous in their user-friendly interfaces and good performance. So what are you waiting for? Pick your best code editor for iPad now!