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- Top 10 Free Text Editors for macOS 10.15 1. This is one of the most popular text editors for Mac OS X 10.15 and the reason is very simple; it has a lot of very useful features. For example, it is a very easy to use, has features that allow for folding and syntax highlighting and it has a very high level of customization.
- Download UltraEdit for Mac and Linux. Download and try UltraEdit for Mac or Linux before you buy it! This download is the full version of the text editor for Mac and Linux and includes all features. UltraEdit will default to the appropriate language based upon your system locale setting. Download Windows version; UltraEdit for Mac latest changes.
2020-12-28 17:33:53 • Filed to: macOS 10.15 • Proven solutions
If you use text editors a lot, you may find the built in macOS 10.15 text editor a little lacking in terms of features. Fortunately, there are a lot of free options you can download and use. The following are just 10 of the best we could find.
Top 10 Free Text Editors for macOS 10.15
1. Sublime Text 3
This is one of the most popular text editors for Mac OS X 10.15 and the reason is very simple; it has a lot of very useful features. For example, it is a very easy to use, has features that allow for folding and syntax highlighting and it has a very high level of customization. These features come at a cost since although the Sublime Text 3 has a free trial version; the premium version is very expensive.
Pros
- It is very easy to use
- Has a lot of useful features
- It offers numerous customization options
- Allows users to assign custom keyboard shortcuts
Cons
- Some of the plugins you have to use with this editor may affect its performance
- At $80 the premium version may be out of reach for many
2. Brackets
Brackets is another very popular plain text editor for macOS 10.15. It is particularly beloved by web designers and was designed by Adobe. One of Brackets' best features is the 'Live Preview' feature that allows a live view of how CSS or HTML code appears in Chrome.
Pros
- It is free and open source
- It has a variety of free extensions to expand functionality
- It has a lot of great features
- Lightweight and easy to install
Cons
- It is useful mostly to front-end developers
- It doesn't have some fundamental useful commands you'd find on an ordinary text editor
3. Atom
Atom is a free text editor for Mac Catalina that has features as good and as useful as Sublime Text 3 but is completely free to use. It is also Open Source, which means it will be completely free to use and continues to be upgraded to include even more useful features. It is built on JavaScript, CSS, HTML Node.js integration and runs on Electron.
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Pros
- It is completely free to use and open source
- Has a lot of features found on some premium tools
- It user interface is very pleasant
- Has a lot of customization options
Cons
- It has too many packages that can slow it down
- Can take up too many resources on your Mac
4. UltraEdit
If you are looking for a text editor that is versatile UltraEdit is the best tool for you. It supports a large variety of languages including JavaScript, Python, Perl, PHP and many more. But it is a relatively older text editor, having been released 25 years ago and this age could raise reliability concerns.
Pros
- It supports numerous languages
- It is regularly updated
- It is fast and easy to use
- Can handle large files easily
Cons
- At $99.95 for the premium version it is pricey
- You may have to purchase some features separately
5. BBEdit 12
Developed by Bare Bones software, BBEdit is another text editor for Mac that has been around for quite a while. It has dozens of customization options and numerous very useful features including built-in tools used for text manipulations.
Pros
- It is very reliable and dependable despite its age
- It offers great performance
- It has a variety of built-in tools and languages
- It is fast and very easy to use
Cons
- The premium version will cost you $49
6. Coda 2/ Nova
Coda 2 is a text editor that is designed for web developers and as such you will find that it has multiple useful features for web developers. These features include code folding, syntax highlighting, indentation guides, find and replace and project- wide autocomplete among others. This text editor recently received an upgrade, allowing it to perform faster and adding new features to its already great arsenal of features.
Pros
- It has a very useful search function that is also very reliable
- It allows users to access and edit files remotely
- Designed for web developers with features that can help make their work easier
Cons
- It has limited features when compared to similar editors
- At $99 the premium version is very expensive
7. Textastic
This is a text editor that combines power and a simple to use, friendly interface. This makes it the ideal tool for beginners although some of its powerful features may be ideal for every level of user. It comes packed with features, but perhaps the most useful is the ability to work in multiple tabs.
Pros
- It supports a large number of scripts and markup languages
- Allows users to work with multiple features
- Can sync with iCloud
Cons
- It may not be as powerful as the other tools on this list
- It lacks SSH and Python support
8. TextMate
This is another simple to use text editor that may be appealing to both novices and expert users alike. It has powerful project management features and a simple to use interface to allow users to find those features quickly.
Pros
- It is Open Source
- It works with Xcode
- Lightweight and easy to install
Cons
- At $56.25 the premium version is quite costly
9. Visual Studio Code
This Microsoft text editor's features are so compatible with the Mac that users don't feel any different than when using it on Windows. Its main features include a fast source-code editor, a keyboard centric code editing approach and being able to highlight syntax for 30 different languages.
Pros
- It is free to use
- Supports a lot of languages
- It has a simple and easy to understand user interface
- It is updated regularly and has various plugins for added performance
Cons
- It can be a bit complicated to learn how to use
- You may have to install too many plugins to get all the features you want
10. CodeRunner 2
This is a text editor that is specifically designed for Mac users and one of the most affordable Mac text editors in the market. It supports a wide range of languages and a lot of features while somehow remaining lightweight and very easy to use.
Pros
- It supports a lot of different languages
- It has a clean and simple to use interface
- It is highly customizable
- Has all the necessary IDE features
Cons
- It may not be the ideal to use for big projects or big files
- It has numerous features but not as much as the other premium tools on this list
Best PDF Editor for macOS 10.15
- It may not be as powerful as the other tools on this list
- It lacks SSH and Python support
8. TextMate
This is another simple to use text editor that may be appealing to both novices and expert users alike. It has powerful project management features and a simple to use interface to allow users to find those features quickly.
Pros
- It is Open Source
- It works with Xcode
- Lightweight and easy to install
Cons
- At $56.25 the premium version is quite costly
9. Visual Studio Code
This Microsoft text editor's features are so compatible with the Mac that users don't feel any different than when using it on Windows. Its main features include a fast source-code editor, a keyboard centric code editing approach and being able to highlight syntax for 30 different languages.
Pros
- It is free to use
- Supports a lot of languages
- It has a simple and easy to understand user interface
- It is updated regularly and has various plugins for added performance
Cons
- It can be a bit complicated to learn how to use
- You may have to install too many plugins to get all the features you want
10. CodeRunner 2
This is a text editor that is specifically designed for Mac users and one of the most affordable Mac text editors in the market. It supports a wide range of languages and a lot of features while somehow remaining lightweight and very easy to use.
Pros
- It supports a lot of different languages
- It has a clean and simple to use interface
- It is highly customizable
- Has all the necessary IDE features
Cons
- It may not be the ideal to use for big projects or big files
- It has numerous features but not as much as the other premium tools on this list
Best PDF Editor for macOS 10.15
If you use text editors on a daily basis, chances are that you may also need a PDF editor. One of the best PDF editors to use for any project is PDFelement . This tool is designed to make it easier for you to not just create, but also manage and edit PDFs with ease. PDFelement allows users to carry out several functions including converting PDF documents to several other formats including Text, HTML, Word and many others.
Some of the features that make PDFelement the best tool include the following;
- It has highly effective editing tools to help you edit text, images, pages, links and watermarks on any PDF document
- An OCR function is very useful for converting scanned PDFs into editable formats
- You can use PDFelement for Mac to annotate a PDF document in numerous ways including commenting, highlighting, adding stamps, filling and drawing
- It also comes with numerous document protection features for documents with sensitive information. You can add a digital signature or password protect the PDF
- It allows you to easily print and share a PDF document
- Additional document creation, merging and numbering features make it a complete PDF editing suite
- It can also be used to convert PDFs to a variety of other formats including Word, TXT, HTML, PowerPoint and Excel among others
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There are four text editors you can use from the Terminal: Pico, Nano, Vi and Emacs. Each can be used to quickly edit text files. Learn how to access them and what makes them different.Check out MacMost Now 256: Using the Text Editors Hidden in Terminal at YouTube for closed captioning and more options.
Video Transcript: Hi. This is Gary with MacMost Now. Today's episode let's take a look at some of the hidden text editors on your Mac. So how many text editors or word processors do you think come in your Mac? Well, maybe one. Text Edit which is pretty capable. There's also of course Pages in iWork if you have pay extra for iWork. But in fact, the answer would be six because there's four hidden inside the terminal. So to open terminal look in 'applications' and then in 'utilities' and you'll find it there. Now you have a window that looks like this. It's a command line. You have to type a 'command'. Or, in this case, the name of a program you want to run. Let's type in Pico which is going to be the first text editor we'll look at. Type it in and hit return and you drop into the Pico text editor. Here you can type text. You can type new lines. You can go ahead and you can use the arrow keys to move around. And you can also use commands which you see at the bottom of the screen. They're control commands so you have to use the 'control' key not the 'command' key to run them. So control 'w' will allow you to search. And likewise, control 'o' will allow you to save the file out. Like that. Control 'x' will allow you to exit.Now an alternative to Pico is Nano. N-A-N-O. Go into that and you'll see it looks exactly the same as Pico. That's because it pretty much is exactly the same, just a slightly different license. Either one's available on your machine and you can use either one. Now let's look at how you would open a file using either Pico or Nano. One way to do it would be to type the name of the program you want to run, like Nano, and type the name of the file you want to open. So we'll type in the name of the file we used last time. myfile.txt. And there we go. We're editing that file we created in Pico, now in Nano.Now suppose the file you want to edit isn't conveniently in the same directory where you're located and you're not really good at navigating around the terminal. Well, you can use the finder to help you open a file. So here's a finder window and there's a file called anothertest.txt. I'm going to open that up in Nano. Type Nano. And then I'm going to drag the file here into terminal and it will insert a full path to it. So instead of having to type all that, I simply use the drag command. I hit return and now I'm editing that file and I can save it back out. So it's easy to edit files you can find in the finder using either Pico or Nano.Now here's a completely different type of word processor. It's one called VI. Type V-I and it will drop you into this VI editor which looks very different; got this little welcome screen. This is also a modal editor. So it's got to be in 'insert' mode for you to type in. Or it can be command mode for you to do commands, that type of thing. So for instance, if I type now nothing happens. However, if I go ahead and press 'i', I see the 'insert word' appear at the bottom of the screen and now I can type into it. To escape from the insert mode I hit the 'escape' key. Now I can type in different commands, things that I want to do. I can use the arrow keys to navigate around. Let's say if I want to delete a character, I press the 'x' key. Now if I want to insert, again, press 'insert'. I can do like that. I have to escape to get out of insert mode. I can do things like 'o' to insert a new line after the current one. It's very different than a standard word processor but it's something that programmers have been using for decades. And those that really get into it find that they can type and edit text documents extremely quickly using just keyboard commands. So let's look at the king of all terminal text editors. It's something called Emacs and it's also been around for decades. So we're going to type in E-M-A-C-S and it'll bring us into Emacs. As you can see by this help screen that first appears when you run it, there's a ton of stuff in Emacs. It's extremely complex. There's a lot of different things you can do. But it's also extremely powerful. So for instance, let's go ahead and open a file. We'll do control 'x' and then control 'f' and it prompts us for the file name. Myfile.txt. We can also create a new file this way. But here's the file that we were currently using. We can go ahead and type things in here as well. Let me go ahead and page something in from the buffer and you can see there's all this different text in there. Now one of the cool things you can do with Emacs is you can split the view. So you can look at two different parts of the document at the same time. So to do that, we're going to do control 'x' and we're going to hit '2'. Split the window in two, you can see there's a top and a bottom. I can go ahead and scroll at the top here and you can see that the bottom part of the window doesn't change. If I change something, you can see it appears in both places. So if you need to edit two parts of a document, you can be reading one part of the document in one window and editing it in the other. Well, you can do that with Emacs. Just one example of the power inside this program. Okay. So Pico and Nano are pretty easy to learn. You can pretty much play around with them a little bit and get around and change files. But both VI and Emacs are extremely difficult to learn with tons of commands and lots of power. However, you can search on the web and finds lots of different tutorials because both of these programs have been around for decades. There's tons of documentation. There are even books written about how to use them. So here's a quick fun look at some of the hidden inside your terminal. Till next time, this is Gary Rosenzweig with MacMost Now.