2020-10-27 20:46:13 • 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
We think the current best free macOS/Mac OS X WYSIWYG HTML Editor is SeaMonkey, part of the lovely free and open source Mozilla Project. First, it’s a completely free WYSIWYG editor and is part of a larger suite that includes its composer, an Internet browser, email & newsgroup client with an included web feed reader, HTML editor, IRC chat. UltraEdit is an award-winning text editor. CNET/Download.com says about UltraEdit: 'With its clear layout and powerful project and work-space features, it can handle complex and sophisticated software-development projects. But despite its vast range of features, UltraEdit never feels overwhelming.
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.
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.
Kext Editor For Mac Catalina
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
Best Text Editor For Mac
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
Basic Text Editor For Mac
- 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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Free Download or Buy PDFelement right now!
Buy PDFelement right now!
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