- Best Text Editor For Mac
- Mac Text Editor Terminal
- Text Editor For Mac
- Plain Text Editor For Mac
- Text Editor For Mac Terminal Templates
There is no shortage of options for text editors geared towards developers on the Mac, but TextMate is our top pick. It wins out thanks to its massive programming language syntax support, helpful code snippets, expandability, and integration with the OS X terminal.
TextMate
- Whether you’re a developer or a writer, a good text editor is a must-have on any computer, in any operating system. The humble text editor is great for managing code, writing down quick notes.
- Depends on what text editor you want to use. Personally I use vi, but it's a bit UNIX-y for traditional Mac folks. Command would either be 'vi ' or 'sudo vi ' for system config files.
- Copy it into Script Editor, and save it as an Application called VI.To use your new application to open any text file, control-click on a text file and choose Get Info from the pop-up menu.
I work a lot at the command line in a Terminal and would like to start a text editor on a certain file. I'm from Linux Land and normally use kwrite or gedit from a bash shell. Trying to find the Mac.
Platform: Mac OS X
Price: Free!
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Price: Free!
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Features
- Column Selections and Column Typing
- Expand Trigger Words to Code Blocks With Tab-able Placeholders
- Support for Darcs, Perforce, SVK, and Subversion
- Works As External Editor for (s)ftp Programs
Note: This feature list is borrowed from the TextMate site and the links will take you directly to TextMate's pages containing more info on each feature.
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![Default text editor mac Default text editor mac](https://cdn.makeuseof.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/blinky2.jpg)
Where It Excels
TextMate is excellent. It's as simple as you need it to be, providing only a single window for editing a single document, or it can expand to handling a large file structure. It supports syntax highlighting for practically any programming language you can think of, plus it contains code snippets. These things can be expanded by downloading third-party add-ons. TextMate has great code organization features. It updates frequently enough that you feel taken care of but not so frequently you want to smack it in the face (like with Evernote). You can even use TextMate as your text editor in the terminal with the command
mate
. If you're looking for a WYSISYG editor, TextMate—and this entire category—is not for you. If you just want to write code in a great editor, you've come to the right app.Advertisement
Where It Falls Short
Organizing the files you're currently working on could be a little more user-friendly, as it can be a little bit tedious if you don't open your entire work folder immediately at launch. The undo history is so detailed that you can find yourself pressing Command+Z a lot just to get back to the place you wanted. Generally it's just faster to retype it. Overall, though, there's very little to complain about. At one point we complained about its $58 price tag, but now that TextMate is open-source and free it's got almost everything going for it.
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The Competition
It's impossible to avoid mentioning SublimeText because it's so similar. It has almost the same support for language syntax as TextMate, and even has a Windows version as well (which is where the app originated, but that Mac version is still very Mac-like). Honestly, whether you use Sublime Text or TextMate is really going to come down to preference. They're both excellent and both, perhaps, a bit too expensive. They also both come with trials, so you can check them both out and decide for yourself.
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But maybe you're someone who doesn't want to pay for their programming-friendly text editor. If that's you, there are a couple of other alternatives that don't cost a thing. First, TextWrangler is a capable option with a loyal user base (if they haven't already upgraded to its big brother BBEdit), but it's a little low on capabilities and has an interface that feels pretty dated. Alternatively, there's Fraise (the successor to Smultron), which is another free, capable, but not-as-amazing-as-TextMate (and Sublime Text) text editor.
The other free option that's probably most like TextMate (and Sublime Text, for that matter) is Kod. It supports over 65 languages, is remarkably fast and lightweight, and only comes with one real disadvantage: it's in its early stages of development. When I checked it out earlier this year, however, it was pretty solid. Kod is very much worth a look, even if it hasn't been around for quite as long as the others.
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Active8 months ago
I work a lot at the command line in a Terminal and would like to start a text editor on a certain file. I'm from Linux Land and normally use kwrite or gedit from a bash shell. Trying to find the Mac equivalent, as a guess, tried
and
and
and other variations. I can't seem to find the proper name of the text editor app. (No, vi isn't to my liking.) Oddly, the guy at an Apple store didn't know this.
Joel Spolsky♦1,4731313 gold badges2929 silver badges4646 bronze badges
DarenWDarenW1,70866 gold badges2121 silver badges2222 bronze badges
8 Answers
Here are some possible answers, all using the 'open' command-line utility.
The -a option means 'open the file argument with the named application':
open -a TextEdit file.txt
The -e option means 'open the file argument with the TextEdit application':
open -e file.txt
The -t option means 'open the file with the default application for editing text files, as determined via LaunchServices'. By default, this will be /Applications/TextEdit.app; however, it's possible for this setting to get overridden:
open -t file.txt
Finally, any file that's of the 'text' type will get opened by the application bound to the text type if you just say
open file.txt
. You can use the 'file' command to reveal what the operating system thinks the file type is: file file.txt
. So, for example, if you renamed 'file.txt' to just 'textfile' then open textfile
would still open it in the default text-file editing application, as long as file textfile
still thought that 'textfile' was actually a text file.A short 'help' file on
open
can be found by runningOr you can read the whole manual with
CousinCocaine6,58299 gold badges3939 silver badges6666 bronze badges
Viktor HaagViktor Haag1,37211 gold badge1010 silver badges1111 bronze badges
![Text Editor For Mac Terminal Tem Text Editor For Mac Terminal Tem](/uploads/1/2/6/4/126452877/989721922.png)
The default text editor is TextEdit. You can open a text file in there by using open -a:
If you want to use another app, just put it's name in, like this:
Nathan GreensteinNathan Greenstein21.2k2121 gold badges8686 silver badges127127 bronze badges
There are two ways:
If your default text editor is TextEdit, you can simply use
to open it in TextEditor.
Best Text Editor For Mac
If your default text editor is not TextEdit, and you want to open it in TextEdit specifically, you can use
Either of those can be made an alias in your shell config file, of course.
mipadimipadi1,99733 gold badges2222 silver badges2626 bronze badges
If you search for a comfortable way with more 'linux feel'add something like the following to your
~/.profile
:or
depending on your editors.
MartinMartin
If you already started to write in terminal and you want to continue on your favorite editor you can press ctrl+X, ctrl+E and continue working in emacs or your default bash editor.
If you want to change the default editor, change the environment variable EDITOR to your favorite one:
EDSanchaEDSancha
See if you have the vim editor, I didn't even realize my terminal could use it.
Try:
to figure out its controls.
You can edit files pretty well with it. The syntax looks something like:
user70580user70580
TextWrangler (now defunct and replaced with BBEdit) when installed with the
Command Line Utilities
, allowed you to do:Mac Text Editor Terminal
to launch TextWrangler, which to me is nicer than
open -t README.txt
, but maybe I'm just suffering from inertia.Text Editor For Mac
FYI -
edit
is a binary executable file (from the TextWrangler kit), not just an alias or symlink.Sridhar SarnobatSridhar Sarnobat
Plain Text Editor For Mac
Alex ChaliyAlex Chaliy