From a general perspective, the best text editor for macOS 10.14 is more of a big picture approach. We are not referring to the specific text we have here in this document, but a more of a general overview of what you can expect from a comprehensive text editor. If you plan on writing strictly in text form of coding you will also gain additional functionality when it comes to optimizing your code for compilation.
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Which editor should you choose for programming? Which source code editor is the best one for Mac? Are there free editors for coding? We have a short guide on the best free text editor for mac and how to choose the text editor. If you are a coder, these tips about the best free text editor for mac may help you.
Text Editor for Mac
As a writer, I spend a long time on the computer, typically looking at a text editor, which is why I wanted to get a free desktop app that would help me with my writing. Years ago, I was introduced to a very transparent and simple editor called TextEdit, which I have downloaded several times from Apple’s official website. With the advances in technology over the past few years, it is no longer necessary to have a powerful machine for editing documents. Plus you can find inexpensive options that have all the features you need. In this article, we will talk about top text editors for macOS 10.14 you can use to edit text files.
Sublime Text
For some, Sublime Text sets the bar when it comes to text editors. It’s a beautiful feature-rich text editor for editing code that puts a premium on user experience. Its features include a distraction-free writing mode, and split editing, in addition to quick shortcuts and search.
Speaking of which, there’s a whole host of keyboard shortcuts that let you do anything from opening files to showing and hiding the sidebar, duplicating lines, going to a specific line number, opening the spell checker, and – well – you get the idea. Like Atom, Sublime has an incredibly active repository that will be adding new features long after you’ve made the initial download.
Unlike some of the other text editors featured here, though, Sublime Text isn’t free. However, it’s not a big cost for the license, and for some users, the extra features make it definitely worth paying for.
Notepad++
Notepad++ is an excellent alternative notepad application for Windows computers. It’s really easy to use for beginners who just need a text file opener or editor but also includes some really advanced features.
This program uses tabbed browsing, which means several documents remain open at a time 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-and-replace function, automatic syntax highlighting, word auto-completion, offline text-file conversion.
The Notepad++ Find option searches for words with criteria like backward direction, match the whole word only, match case, and wrap around.
Also supported: bookmarking, macros, auto-backup, multi-page searching, resumed sessions, read-only mode, encoding conversions, searching for words on Wikipedia, and opening 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++ saves text documents to a huge variety of formats like TXT, CSS, ASM, AU3, BASH, BAT, HPP, CC, DIFF, HTML, REG, HEX, JAVA, SQL, and VBS.
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.
Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Developers have flocked to Visual Studio Code (VS Code) since it is a Microsoft product. It is equipped with several packages and free extensions that are available in its marketplace. You can also modify the code editor to your specifications.
Besides supporting organizations quickly and debugging, Visual Studio Code includes its built-in terminal and provides syntax checking and interaction with a variety of source control technologies. As it proposes completions and on-the-fly pop-ups that reveal the documentation for classes and methods, we consider it to be one of the finest IDEs for Python coders.
Features: Auto-complete, free extensions, community-developed packages.
Pricing: Free
Atom
Atom is another top-rated free text editor for Mac. It is a robust software for programming and coding and comes packed with several futuristic features. If personalization is your priority, then Atom is one of the best code editors for Mac available in 2021. It is an open-source tool developed by the developers of one of the well-known SVC services GitHub. Hence no doubt why this tool offers complete customization. The software even allows you to tweak its interface. Here are some of the praiseworthy features of this macOS text editor.
Features:
- The Microsoft subsidiary, GitHub has developed Atom on the HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and Node.js integration.
- You can enhance the functionality of this Mac text editor by installing multiple open-source packages.
- It also provides an option to add additional features via HTML and JavaScript.
- Atom comes with a autocomplete feature that helps its users to code faster.
Below are the pros and cons of this best macOS text editor that can help you in making a better choice.
Pros
- Options to customize the software comprehensively
- Lots of packages & built-in package manager
- Entirely free
- Comes with a file system browser
- Feature to split panes and compare & edit multiple code files
- Multi-platform utility
Cons
- Complex Git integration
- Not suitable for beginners
- No functions to create drafts or backups
- Too many packages may slow-down the text editor
- Lacks real-time code review feature
Espresso
Espresso is a gorgeous Mac-only code editor that’s powerful and smooth, like the caffeinated beverage it’s named after. This text editor has been credited with helping its users edit CSS in less time, and that’s partly down to its editing interface.
Built for real-time editing, it’s split into three columns comprising your files, code editor, and navigator, which lets you see the various sections of code you’re working on. And anything that’s edited in the window is reflected in the browser – you can drag-and-drop content into Espresso’s interface to see it update in the back end in real-time.
Brackets
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 clean and modern and feels really easy to use despite all of its advanced settings. In fact, nearly all the options are hidden away from plain sight 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 button for a really simple distraction-free 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 include one to support W3C validation, Ungit to make it easier to use Git, an HTML tag menu, and Python tools.
Brackets come 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.
It’s available as an MSI and DMG file for use in Windows and macOS, respectively.
Vim
Vim connects with a wide range of tools thanks to its support for Windows, Linux, and Mac. It is built for command-line usage and use in GUI.
In 1991, Vim was invented. It was among the most famous text editors, which meant that developers could use a sequence of instructions to produce updates and scripts. Vim has one of the oldest editing suites, and it’s notable that coders worldwide still use it.
Features: Undo tree with several levels, comprehensive plugin system, supports various programming languages and file types, find and change, and integration with numerous tools.
Pricing: Free
Conclusion:
Text editors are the most essential tools in web design when building or editing a website when you do not have access to a code editor. Whether you are editing code when building a website, or when you have simple plain text to edit, the use of a good text editor is essential.
We don’t know where you’re coming from with your Macs, but we sure do love our Macs. And we also love it when you can be productive with your Mac. A good Code Editor is essential to any complex coding session or web development task. A great code editor makes it easier for you to perform your coding tasks and increases the efficiency at which you work.