Text Editor Reader For Mac

3) Adobe Acrobat Reader DC for Mac This PDF-Xchange for Mac alternative is regarded as the ultimate tool for PDF editing. It is the leading PDF software thanks to a great variety of advanced tools. The following applications are the best free HTML editors for Macintosh, both WYSIWYG and text editors, rated from best to worst. Each editor listed will have a score, percentage, and a link to more information. We've left the original text (stricken out) about PDF Editor in the alternatives section so you can see how little of a recommendation we made. Preview Platform: Mac OS X. Read this to know about the best font editor software for Mac. If you want to create your own font or make changes in existing one, you need font editor. Read this to know about the best font editor software for Mac. The edit view works as a text editor, allows you to draw, edit, and kern your glyphs in a word context rather than isolated. We have evaluated over 20 free HTML editors for Macintosh against over 40 different criteria relevant to professional web designers and developers. The following applications are the best free HTML editors for Macintosh, both WYSIWYG and text editors, rated from best to worst.

Kindle Reader For Mac
Best Text Editor For Mac
Best Free Text Editor Mac

Text editors are notoriously divisive. Everyone has their own preferences, and each of those opinions are valid. What works for one person, task, or project might not work for another. We all find productivity in different places.

That’s why coming up with a list of the “best” Mac text editors is quite hard. There’s a chance we’ll miss your favorite, or include a cut-price freebie that doesn’t do half the tasks you need on a daily basis.

But that’s OK, because you can tell us all about it in the comments at the end.

Kindle Reader For Mac

Free Text Editors

The following is a list of completely free text editors, with no paid upgrades or extra purchases. You might think that free means “lacking in features,” but that’s not the case with these.

Atom

Atom tries to be a bit of everything, and for the most part it succeeds. It’s a project from hosting and version control maestro GitHubNot Just for Coders: 9 Ways To Use GitHub For Creative WorkNot Just for Coders: 9 Ways To Use GitHub For Creative WorkGitHub is known for the great features it can offer programmers, but it's not only for them. There are plenty of other creative uses for GitHub. Here are nine you can explore.Read More, and it’s completely open source and free to use. Don’t let the price tag put you off; Atom has some serious potential under the hood.

Describing itself as “a hackable editor for the 21st century,” Atom is a great starting point for beginners. It’s a basic text editor out of the box, with optional packages that add more complex functionality. These include a full integrated development environment (IDE) known as Atom-IDE.

There’s support for Git and GitHub, with no need for additional packages. When you want to add features and language support, there’s a package manager which makes this easy. You can also customize the interface to your liking, another important aspect of any such serious tool.

One standout package is Teletype for Atom, a real-time collaboration feature that allows you to work on projects with others. Atom is also cross-platform, so you can transfer operating systems while maintaining familiarity with your favorite editor.

Download:Atom

TextWrangler

TextWrangler is one of the most user-friendly examples of a text editor, with a price tag to match. Now hosted on the Mac App Store, TextWrangler offers an old-school feel, rock-solid performance, and the option of graduating to a more powerful yet familiar tool (BBEdit, below) if you feel the need.

It’s another great entry point for learning to code or use text editors in general, whether you’re writing simple AppleScript projects, editing CSS, or building a website in HTML. It’s also a good choice if macOS’ built-in editor TextEditMake TextEdit More Powerful With These 9 Hidden FeaturesMake TextEdit More Powerful With These 9 Hidden FeaturesNative Mac editor TextEdit has a lot of powerful features under the hood, so here's how to find them.Read More comes up short when editing plain text.

The app isn’t just a stripped-down freebie though. It offers a wealth of powerful tools like grep pattern matching, multi-file search and replace, varied themes, and syntax coloring options. You can also work on files remotely via FTP and SFTP.

It lacks some of the fancier features seen in the premium packages, notably a preview pane to view changes in real time. It feels and behaves like a native macOS app, which makes it particularly user-friendly compared to some of the other examples on this list.

Download:TextWrangler

Vim

Now for something completely different: Vim is a command line-based text editorVim Is Awesome: Make It Better With These 5 CustomizationsVim Is Awesome: Make It Better With These 5 CustomizationsText editors might not be sexy, but they are important. One of the most powerful Linux text editors is VIM (short for, Vi Improved), and here we show you how to extend its functionality further.Read More that comes with macOS. Simply open Terminal, type vim, and hit Enter. You’re now using one of the most respected text editors of all time, but it’s not without a steep learning curve.

Fortunately, Vim comes with a stack of documentation to help you learn how to use it. This includes quick reference and help documents, plus a 30-minute tutorial to get you up and running. Be warned: even figuring out how to access the tutorials is a lesson for those unfamiliar with the command line.

Like other powerful-yet-complex applications, you can accomplish a lot with Vim if you know how to use it properly. This knowledge won’t come overnight, but in a few years you’ll likely be able to accomplish more than in a comparable GUI-based application.

Despite Vim being built into the OS, you might also be interested in MacVim. This is a slightly more user-friendly port, with full menu bar controls for functions and a more up-to-date version of Vim than that maintained by Apple. You can open, save, and access recent documents like you would in other GUI-based editors, which makes it slightly less intimidating for newbies.

Download:MacVim

GNU Emacs

Another great free option with an off-putting learning curve, GNU Emacs is the “free as in libre” version of the Emacs text editor. First released in 1976, Emacs is one of the longest-running open source projects, and it still receives updates today.

Emacs is known for its unique methods of getting work done. It relies on a programming language known as Emacs-Lisp, a fork of the Lisp language that was originally specified in 1958. You’ll need to use Emacs-Lisp for even the most basic functions of editing, but it’s also used to expand the editor beyond its humble text-based roots.

These expansions include an email client, news reader, file manager, and games like Snake and Tetris. Under the hood, though, it’s still a basic text editor with features like context-aware editing and support for syntax coloring. There’s full Unicode support and a packaging system for adding new features.

Like Vim, Emacs requires a commitment to learn to use it long before you understand why so many people swear by it. While GNU Emacs is one fork, XEmacs is another that’s worth investigating if you like the sound of this command line editor.

Download:GNU Emacs | XEmacs

Visual Studio Code

Like Atom, Visual Studio Code is a relative newcomer in the text editing space. Not to be confused with Visual Studio, Microsoft’s full-power IDE with a price tag to match, Visual Studio Code is a lightweight text and script editor built around the concept of expanding support with plugins.

There are plugins for writing and running shell scripts in Code, for penning markdown documents, and even writing AppleScript. That’s right; you can use Microsoft’s text editor to create scripts that will only work on Apple machines.

The Visual Studio Code marketplace turns the app into a Swiss Army knife of code, text, and script editing. A reliance on plugins means the app is lightweight and responsive from the start, as you’re not lugging around features and functionality you’re never going to use.

Which plugins are worth getting? Our roundup of Visual Studio Code plugins will answer that for you.

Code uses an attractive dark theme, and it doesn’t feel like a lazy port of the Windows version either. It’s worth a shot, particularly if you don’t get on with the likes of Vim and Emacs. Check out our top tips for boosting productivity in Visual Studio Code10 Essential Productivity Tips for Visual Studio Code10 Essential Productivity Tips for Visual Studio CodeVisual Studio Code blows other programming text editors out of the water. It's free, open source, lightning fast, and packed with productivity features.Read More to learn more.

Download:Visual Studio Code

Premium Text Editors

If you’re looking for a text editor to use at work, or you’re at a stage where your tools can have a serious impact on your productivity and paycheck, you should consider one of these. Luckily they all come with a decent free evaluation period, so you can try before you buy.

Best Text Editor For Mac

TextMate

Powerful, simple, and lightweight, TextMate is the preferred choice of many Mac professionals, and it’s not hard to see why. This editor has support for a range of languages and syntax, tabs, and a language-specific approach that can save you time and effort.

TextMate incorporates snippets, macros, and scoping features that vastly speed up workflow without stepping into full IDE territory. The developer aimed to bring “Apple’s approach to operating systems into the world of text editors” and that’s a fairly good summation of why so many love TextMate.

Despite development stalling from time to time, TextMate maintains a die-hard following of professional users. This has given way to an extensive database of documentation and screencasts, which should help new users get up to speed.

It’s a simple tool to start using, with a clean UI and fair price point. You can download TextMate free for evaluation purposes, though the app doesn’t seem to bother you for registration credentials or a serial number.

Download:TextMate ($60)

Sublime Text 3

Sublime Text is a self-described “sophisticated text editor” that markets itself as a code, markup, and prose editor. It’s probably overkill for the simplest text editing tasks though, considering it costs $80 for a license.

For those who need a powerful tool, Sublime Text delivers a wealth of features and functions11 Sublime Text Tips for Productivity and a Faster Workflow11 Sublime Text Tips for Productivity and a Faster WorkflowSublime Text is a versatile text editor and a gold standard for many programmers. Our tips focus on efficient coding, but general users will appreciate the keyboard shortcuts.Read More. Some of these are hallmarks of the app, like Goto Anything which lets you open a file and quickly navigate to the relevant line in record speed.

The app creates a project-wide index of all classes used for references, and supports multiple selections so you can change more than one element at a time. To cut down on the time you spend in menus, developers devised the Command Palette for rarely-used functions, and fast project switching with no save prompts.

There’s a vast amount of customizability at your fingertips. Many favor the app for its smooth performance under load and attractive UI. It’s also cross-platform, and you only need a single license to use the app across all your machines and platforms.

Download:Sublime Text 3 ($80)

BBEdit

BBEdit wouldn’t have earned a place on this list were it not for a large userbase that’ll defend it to the death. And that’s just fine, since BBEdit is a mature and powerful text editor that prioritizes performance and reliability above all else.

It’s the quintessential Mac text editor, from the developers who bought you TextWrangler. Despite lacking the freshness of Atom or the crisp UI seen in Sublime Text, BBEdit is built from the ground up for macOS, optimized for macOS, with a macOS approach to text editing.

That means keyboard shortcuts that make sense to the average Mac user, and an approach to text editing that follows many of Apple’s design sensibilities. It also bakes in support for Mac technologies like Bonjour. This removes some barriers for entry seen in other apps, but results in a slightly more cumbersome UI than its rivals.

BBEdit is perfect for HTML and text editing, with support for remote editing via FTP/SFTP. The app is highly customizable, from syntax coloring to menu options, user-defined functions, keyboard shortcuts, and macOS Terminal support right in the app.

Download:BBEdit ($50)

Espresso

Not everyone uses their text editor for building websites, but many who do gravitate toward Espresso. It’s an editor that’s aimed squarely at web developers, and it’s got powerful features to make creating websites a more productive experienceCreating Web Interfaces: Where to StartCreating Web Interfaces: Where to StartWe'll show you how web interfaces break down, then point out the key concepts, tools, and building blocks needed to make yourself a 21st century web designer.Read More.

The big one is a live preview browser, so you can see your changes in real time. The app incorporates Xray layout tools, and CSSEdit visual styling for colors, gradients, shadows, and more. It supports HTML, CSS, LESS, JavaScript, CoffeeScript, Apache, and XML out of the box. More languages are available through plugins.

There’s a laundry list of features that keep users coming back, like customizable snippets and UI, a clean modern design, custom spacing and indentation to keep your code clean, support for tabs, templates and custom templates, powerful find and replace, and multi-line editing for making changes in multiple locations at once.

It’s not cheap at $79, but you can download a trial and see how it works before you commit. It’s a great tool for web developers, but lacking in other areas when it comes to scripting and coding.

Download:Espresso ($79)

So Many Text Editors

There are so many text editors available that we couldn’t possibly include them all, but we thought these were worth a mention if you’re still on the hunt:

Coda 2 ($80): Another web development-focused text editor like Espresso; worth a look if you’re in need of such a tool.
PhpStorm (from $90): A PHP-focused IDE with a $90 yearly subscription model; ideal for PHP developers but overkill for many other applications.
Smultron ($10): A better-than-free text editor with a tidy interface that won’t break the bank.

Remember: The text editor with the most tools isn’t necessarily the best. The best text editor is the one that suits you and meets your expectations. It’s the editor that allows you to get more done. It’s the editor that falls away into the background, allowing you to concentrate on your work rather than the software you use to get your job done.

But you’ve probably got your own favorites in mind already (if you don’t prefer an IDEText Editors vs. IDEs: Which One Is Better For Programmers?Text Editors vs. IDEs: Which One Is Better For Programmers?Choosing between an advanced IDE and a simpler text editor can be hard. We offer some insight to help you make that decision.Read More). We’d love to hear which text editor you get on with the best, and why it works for you. Please add your own suggestions in the comments below!

Explore more about: HTML, Mac, Text Editor, Visual Studio Code.

Please note that TextWrangler is NOT compatible with High Sierra, macOS 10.13. Refer to https://www.barebones.com/support/textwrangler/ for OS version details.

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, or just as a distraction-free writing tool. This week, we’re looking at five of the best, based on your nominations.

Earlier this week we asked you for your favorite text editors, and while you suggested far more than we can highlight here, there were a few that earned more nominations than the others. Here are the tools you liked the best:

Sublime Text

Cross-platform and feature packed, Sublime Text was a crowd favorite in the call for contenders thread, partially because of its amazing feature-set. Plug-ins and add-ons are available for specific programming languages and uses in Sublime Text, the app features extremely powerful search and go-to features, tons of keyboard commands to help you never have to take your hands off the keyboard while you use it, a distraction-free mode that lets you focus right on your work—whatever that work may happen to be, and much much more. Sublime Text has a tabbed interface so you can have multiple documents open at the same time, and a 10,000ft view on the right so you can see where in your document you are at any time. You can select multiple rows to make simultaneous changes, customize shortcuts to suit your own needs, and even chain shortcuts together to perform complex—but fast—operations. It’s remarkably powerful.

Sublime Text is available for Windows, OS X, and Linux. It’s distributed as evaluation software (meaning it’s free to try, but there’s no time limit on how long you can use it for free) and a full license will cost you $70. A full license is per user, so you can use it on as many computers as you like once you have one. In the call for contenders thread, those of you who nominated Sublime praised its impressive feature-set, developer-friendly plug-ins and API, side-by-side file comparisons, and much more. Read all about it in the nomination thread here and here.

Notepad++

Notepad++ has been around for a long time, and many users have only ever used Notepad++ when they’re ready to upgrade from Notepad or Wordpad. It’s stil under development though, and combines the simple interface of Notepad or Wordpad with advanced features that will make writers and developers happy. Some of them include a customizable interface that you can make as minimal or toolbar-rich as you choose, a document map so you can see where you are in your work at any time, a tabbed interface so you can work in multiple documents, auto-completion and text shortening, macro recording so you can customize shortcuts, and more. You also get customizable syntax highlighting, text folding and collapsable parts of the document (to make things easier to read,) and options you can use to launch the app under certain parameters, just to make your work easier.

Notepad++ is free (free as in free speech and free beer) and available for Windows only. You can grab it as an installable app, or a portable app to run from a flash drive or cloud storage service like Dropbox. If you’re not sure exactly what you’re looking for in a text editor, it’s a good place to start, especially because it’s free. You can donate to the project though, and if you enjoy it, you should. The code is available too, so if you’d rather contribute, you can do that as well. Those of you who nominated it praised its simplicity, wealth of plug-ins for just about every type of user, and of course, its price tag. Read all about it in the nomination thread here.

Vim (and Its Iterations)

Oh boy, Vim. Designed to bring the simplicity of Vi to every platform and person who needed a configurable but not-too-heavy text editor, Vim is one banner of the Holy Text Editor Grail Wars to march under. It’s not without good reason—Vim is cross-platform, free, and while it’s aimed squarely at programmers who want an interface they can tweak to their liking and really get some work done in, you don’t have to be a programmer to get the most use out of it. Instead, you just have to take the time to configure it so it works the way you prefer. It won’t hold your hand (although its extensive help is useful for beginners), but once you remember its keyboard shortcuts and commands, download tons of user scripts to apply to it to streamline your work, and learn your way around, it quickly becomes an essential tool. It supports dozens of languages, keeps a history of your actions so you can easily repeat or undo them, supports macro recording, automatically recognizes file types, and lives—once installed—at your command line.

Vim—and most of its iterations, which include editors that add a GUI to the app so you can launch it without resorting to the command line—are free (GPL licensed). It’s available for any operating system with a command line of just about any type, and it’s charityware, meaning instead of paying for the app, the team behind it suggests you donate to children in Uganda who could use the support via the ICCF. Those of you who praised Vim noted that it takes some commitment to learn, but once you’re familiar with it, the sky’s the limit. Read more in the nomination thread here.

Atom

Calling itself a text editor “for the 21st century,” Atom earned a lot of praise in the nominations round for being a text editor designed for the needs of today’s developers. It’s built by the team at GitHub, and incorporates some of the lessons the team there learned by managing so much code on a regular basis. It’s flexible, customizable, themeable, and even though it’s relatively new, it already has a large following and tons of plugins, thanks to its open API. It operates like a native application, and even the application package is customizable so you only get the modules you need. It packs a tabbed interface, multi-paned layout, easy file browser, and easy learning curve so you can get up and running with it quickly. There’s also solid documentation to help you get started if you need it. Only downside though: Atom is currently in private beta, and you’ll have to sign up for an invite and cross your fingers if you want to give it a try.

Best Free Text Editor Mac

Atom is currently OS X only (10.8+), although Windows and Linux versions are on the roadmap. It’s also free to use while it’s in beta, but when it’s finished and released, the team behind it says it’ll be “competitively priced.” Those of you who nominated it praised its customizability and available plugins, and pointed to the tool’s potential to become one of the best and most powerful text editors we’ve seen in many many years. You can read more about it in the nominations thread here.

Update 07/2015: Atom has released its first stable, 1.0 version, along with fully supported versions for Windows and Linux! You can check out the details here.

Emacs (and Its Iterations)

If you’ve used an operating system with a command line interface, you’ve had Emacs available to you. It’s been around for decades (since Richard Stallman and Guy Steele wrote it in 1976), and its the other major text editor to stand behind in the Holy Text Editor Grail Wars. It’s not the easiest tool, but it’s definitely one of the most powerful. It has a steep learning curve, but it’s always there, ready for use. It’s had a long and storied history, but the version that most people wind up using is GNU Emacs, linked above. It’s richly featured, too—Emacs can handle almost any type of text that you throw at it, handle simple documents or complex code, or be customized with startup scripts that add features or tweak the interface and shortcuts to match your project or preference. Similarly, Emacs supports macro recording, tons of shortcuts (that you’ll have to learn to get really familiar with it), and has a ton of modules created by third parties to leverage the app for completely non-programming purposes, like project planning, calendaring, news reading, and word processing. When we say it’s powerful, we’re not kidding. In large part, its power comes from the fact that anyone can play with it and mold it into something new and useful for everyone.

Emacs is completely cross platform, with versions and derivatives available for Windows, OS X, Linux, and just about every other operating system on the planet. It’s free, as in both free speech and free beer, and comes with detailed help, tutorials, and guides to help you get started using it if you’re new to using Emacs. Those of you who praised it in the call for contenders thread highlighted its flexibility and power, complete customizability, and the fact that you can play Tetris in it, which is admittedly a nice bonus. You can read all about it in its nominations thread here.

Now that you’ve seen the top five, it’s time to put them to an all-out vote to determine the Lifehacker community favorite.

Honorable mentions this week go out to TextWrangler (OS X) and UltraEdit (Windows/OS X/Linux). TextWrangler, as BBEdit’s lighter brother, works equally well as a writing tool as it does a development tool, although it’s designed to be the latter. It’s a great general-purpose text editor with an auto-saving cache that keeps all of your data and documents intact even if you don’t save them to disk between launching the application and closing it. UltraEdit on the other hand, is another crowd-favorite and sports a customizable layout, built-in FTP, find and replace that supports regular expressions, syntax highlighting, and more. Plus, it’s cross-platform. They’re both great options that just missed the top five if you want something more than the top five offers.

We really can’t say how many amazing nominees we got in the call for contenders thread this week. If you’re wondering where your favorite editor is, odds are it was nominated back in that thread, so make sure to go check it out. Remember, the top five are based on your most popular nominations from the call for contenders thread from earlier in the week. Don’t just complain about the top five, let us know what your preferred alternative is—and make your case for it—in the discussions below.

The Hive Five is based on reader nominations. As with most Hive Five posts, if your favorite was left out, it didn’t get the nominations required in the call for contenders post to make the top five. We understand it’s a bit of a popularity contest. Have a suggestion for the Hive Five? Send us an email at tips+hivefive@lifehacker.com!

Title photo by Darrell Nash.