10 of the Best Text Editor Apps for Mac

If you’re a passionate programmer, a budding developer, or a wordsmith searching for the perfect text editing experience on your macOS device, this guide is for you. From sleek and minimalist designs to feature-packed powerhouses, a top text editor for Mac will ignite your creativity, streamline your workflow, and elevate your productivity. This list includes some of the best text editor apps for Mac.

1. Sublime Text

Price: Starting at $99 (free trial available)

Sublime Text is a popular go-to text editor for Mac-owning coders. For one, it is renowned for its lightning-fast performance. Even if it’s a large file, Sublime Text will open and process it with blazing-fast speed. This text editor also provides robust customization options, thanks to its extensive plugin ecosystem. These plugins extend the editor’s functionality, empowering you to tailor it to your specific requirements and preferences.

Sublime Text has a clean user interface, so you’re not distracted by too many unnecessary options on your screen. Still, it offers excellent advanced features, such as multiple cursors, context-aware autocomplete, and quick navigation, that can make your work much more efficient and streamlined.

Pros

• Blazing-fast operation
• Robust multi-selection and editing capabilities
• Rich package manager
• Excellent cross-platform support

Cons

• Lack of built-in Git integration
• Constant updates can be annoying
• No free version

Tip: for more information about Sublime Text, read our Sublime Text review of the popular text editor.

2. Visual Studio Code

Price: Free

Visual Studio Code (VS Code) is another trendy text editor for macOS, focusing on extensibility and developer productivity. For one, it offers extensive language support and a wide range of plugins to enhance its functionality based on your preferences. On top of that, it offers useful features, such as smart auto-completion, integrated terminals, and built-in GUI.

Additionally, VS Code has excellent debugging capabilities and IntelliSense, making it a favorite of many coders and programmers. If you’re a beginner, you can benefit from its extensive community, where you can find many helpful tutorials and guides.

Pros

• Extensive language support
• Smart auto-completion
• Powerful debugging capabilities
• Built-in Git integration

Cons

• High memory usage
• Occasional performance issues with larger projects
• Limited support for non-coding text editing

3. BBEdit

Price: Starting at $49.99 (free trial available)

The list of best macOS text editors cannot be complete without BBEdit, one of the oldest and most reliable HTML and text editors. Since it caters only to macOS, it offers extensive and seamless functionality across the ecosystem. Its powerful coding tools, ease of use, internal help, highly configurable settings, and other features make it an excellent code editor.

However, while a large population of coders use it, its functionality is not limited to it. BBEdit is also a useful text editor with various features for writers, such as text editing, prose manipulation, and textual data.

Pros

• Robust search and replace functionality
• Excellent syntax highlighting
• Useful text editing options
• Full compatibility for macOS

Cons

• Expensive full version
• Lack of advanced IDE-like features
• Limited plugin ecosystem

Also helpful: There are also cross-platform plain text editors for programmers who use multiple devices each day.

4. TextMate

Price: Free (premium version starting at $59)

If you use macOS 10.12 or later and miss Notepad++, the TextMate text editor is the perfect option. As a developer, you will love TextMate for its powerful features, such as File Search, Macros, Bundles, and workflow automation. On top of that, it is a highly customizable text editor that can help you get the best out of it.

Despite offering high functionality with such powerful features, TextMate is relatively easy to use, which makes coding a breezy affair. The best part is that it’s free to use, with a premium (paid) version available. However, the average user can get the most out of the free version.

Pros

• Supports versatile snippets and macros
• Offers customizable themes
• Clean and intuitive interface
• Includes extensive language bundles

Cons

• Limited plugin ecosystem
• Lacks terminal integration
• Occasionally experiences stability issues

5. UltraEdit

Price: Starting at $99.95 (free trial available)

UltraEdit is a highly versatile macOS text editor that professionals use across different industries. It stands out from other text editors, as it can deal with huge files quickly and impressively. Even if you’re dealing with data sets with thousands of lines, you can still easily edit them through UltraEdit.

It can support almost any language or syntax. It offers robust editing and file management capabilities. Its brilliant search feature includes regex support. It also provides various smart features that can automate many text editing tasks – making your work more streamlined and efficient.

Pros

• Excellent file-handling capabilities
• Multi-caret editing
• Built-in FTP/SFTP client
• Powerful find-and-replace functionality

Cons

• Interface may be too complex for beginners
• Relatively expensive
• Occasional instability with certain file types

Good to know: these online resources for C/C++ programming make learning the language a breeze.

6. Brackets

Price: Free

If you’re an Adobe Suite user, Brackets can be an excellent solution for your text editing needs, since it is an Adobe product. Thanks to the vibrant extension ecosystem, you can enhance it to meet any text editing needs.

The best part is that it’s an open-source text editor that excels in web development. It provides advanced text editing features, such as direct code editing, live preview, and more, all with impressive simplicity and ease of use. On top of that, Brackets comes with preprocessor support, another reason it’s a favorite of many coders.

Pros

• Live preview functionality
• Edit CSS and JavaScript right on the page.
• Easy customization with extensions
• Free and open source

Cons

• Limited support for languages other than web development
• Occasional stability issues
• Slower performance with larger projects

7. Emacs

Price: Free

If you’re someone who doesn’t just code an application but works on a larger system level, Emacs may be the best option. It’s a powerful tool that can help you edit and manage files across multiple systems. On top of that, Emacs is a highly extensible and customizable text editor for Mac, which allows you to get the most out of it.

Emacs is known for its vast array of features and powerful scripting capabilities. Despite offering such high functionality and usability, Emacs is open source and free. However, if you’re accustomed to GUI editors, you may find it difficult to get used to Emacs.

Pros

• Easily customizable and expandable
• Free and open source
• Works on a system level

Cons

• Relies on GNU framework
• Steep learning curve for certain users

Tip: these Emacs keyboard shortcuts make it easy to use the program.

8. Textastic

Price: Starting at $7.99 (free trial available)

Textastic is an easy-to-use, yet powerful text editor for macOS. It’s fast and light, offering excellent autofill features, file management systems, and support for various markup languages and source codes. It also allows you to copy and paste code segments from other applications.

It offers top customization abilities to help you get the best out of Textastic. For example, you can create keyboard shortcuts for certain actions you frequently perform on Textastic. The intuitiveness of the user interface further adds to its handiness. It also offers integration with Apple cloud services like iCloud and Dropbox.

Pros

• Extensive language support
• Built-in FTP/SFTP/WebDAV support
• Connects with iCloud and Dropbox
• Syntax highlighting themes
• Relatively cheaper option

Cons

• Limited advanced features compared to some competitors
• Occasional performance issues with large files
• No free version

9. MacVim

Price: Free

Looking for a basic yet powerful text editor but don’t want to fork out money? If so, then MacVim will likely become your next go-to text editor for Mac. While it is not as fancy as other apps in this guide, it gets the basics right. On MacVim, you can find a fair range of useful text-editing tools for coding.

MacVim is unlike other apps on this list in many ways, including the user interface and functionality. You must learn the keyboard shortcuts necessary to use the app. This takes some time to get used to it.

Pros

• Lightweight and fast
• Easy editing commands
• Great for small tasks
• Free

Cons

• Steep learning curve for beginners
• Many keyboard shortcuts
• Minimal GUI interface

Good to know: Linux users can check out a similar list of the best Linux text editors.

10. Espresso

Price: Starting at $99 (free trial available)

If productivity and efficiency are your top priorities, Espresso may be the right Mac text editor. From previewing to coding, building, and publishing websites, it seamlessly takes care of everything. You can even install helper scripts to improve your productivity on Espresso. The intuitiveness and simplicity of its user interface further make your workflow streamlined and fast.

The ability to live preview, auto-build, complete codes, live edit CSS, and sync with the server makes it an excellent tool for website developers. But on the flip side, it has a limited use case: editing web development codes. On top of that, the premium version is more on the expensive side, considering the ROI.

Pros

• Simple and easy to use
• Clean and intuitive user interface
• Focuses on productivity and efficiency

Cons

• Somewhat restricted use case
• Expensive, considering its functionality

The preinstalled Mac text editor, TextEdit, offers basic text editing capabilities but does not have advanced features like the dedicated text editors mentioned here. However, unlike NotePad for Windows, TextEdit can save files in formats like RTF, RTFD, HTML, and Word, allowing documents to include different fonts, font styles, font colors, justifications, and more, offering more flexibility and functionality.

Are you looking for a dedicated mobile device for taking notes? Try one of these digital notepads with a pen.

All images by Ojash Yadav.