Geany icon
Geany icon

Geany

Geany is a powerful, stable and lightweight programmer's text editor that provides tons of useful features without bogging down your workflow.

Geany screenshot 1

Cost / License

Application types

Platforms

  • Mac
  • Windows
  • Linux
  • BSD
  • Snapcraft
  • Flathub
  • PortableApps.com
  • Flatpak
  • Haiku
4.3
Very Good19 reviews
575likes
22comments

Features

Suggest and vote on features

Properties

  1.  Lightweight
  2.  Support for Themes
  3.  Minimalistic
  4.  Customizable
  5.  Distraction-free
  6.  Privacy focused

Features

  1.  Multiplatform
  2.  Code navigation
  3.  Syntax Highlighting
  4.  Shell integration
  5.  Automatic Indentation
  6.  Debian package compatible
  7.  Extensible by Plugins/Extensions
  8.  Ad-free
  9. LaTeX icon  Support for LaTeX
  10.  Dark Mode
  11.  Live Preview
  12.  Autocompletion
  13.  Batch Editing
  14.  Works Offline
  15.  Full-Text Search
  16.  Support for scripting
  17.  Support for MarkDown
  18.  Portable
  19.  Hierarchical Structure
  20. Git icon  Git Support
  21.  Code Formatting
  22.  Spell Checking
  23.  Shortcut keys
  24.  Built-in terminal emulation
  25.  Support for Large File

Geany News & Activities

Highlights All activities

Recent News

Recent activities

  • theEpicEgg56 liked Geany
  • CodeBuddy icon
    tintin_yuan added Geany as alternative to CodeBuddy
  • Jollpi icon
    POX added Geany as alternative to Jollpi
  • Fresh editor icon
    Ugotsta added Geany as alternative to Fresh editor
  • paranoiddownloader liked Geany
  • Athas icon
    POX added Geany as alternative to Athas
  • Kompad icon
    Danilo_Venom added Geany as alternative to Kompad
  • Google Antigravity icon
    nabbisen added Geany as alternative to Google Antigravity
  • Alaik updated Geany
  • holakoyad liked Geany

Comments and Reviews

   
Comment summary: Geany is praised for being lightweight, fast, and versatile, similar to Notepad++ but cross-platform. Users highlight its suitability for coding on Linux, citing features like syntax highlighting, plugin support, and code completion. While generally well-received for programming in various languages, some users note limitations like missing features found in heavier IDEs and issues on Windows, such as incomplete 2-byte character support and GTK dependency.
Top Positive Comment
surveyor3
10

It is very powerful yet simple to use and lightweight. Also there are a lot of plugin that can be written in Python or Lua. You can change compilation commands easily and understand easily what it's doing, unlikely Eclipse. All the main languages as well supported. It's a great alternative to sublime and Notepad++, the only reason it's not very known is that thery're not good on marketing (look at the old school site), and users don't talk about it very much. Unlike other editor it's immediately simple to use but still powerful. Shortcut are well done, powerful and familiar so you can do things like multiline cursor and moving up and down rows of text (which is very useful). Unlike editor like atom or Visual Studio Code it's blazing fast on startup. It is actively developed from many years and it's probably here to stay for many years.

Top Negative Comment
playmobilmeister
1

barely usable from the get go as it does not allow you to change interface languages from your system's default to English

AntumDeluge

Geany does allow you to set the UI language manually ( https://www.geany.org/documentation/faq/#how-can-i-change-the-language-of-the-user-interface ). But it is not user-friendly in my opinion. It uses the environment variable LANGUAGE at launch. So a custom value can be set in a shortcut or on the command line. In my opinion, it should be made to be configurable in settings.

Sam Lander
1

Nice and lightweight (50mb downloaded on Windows, compared to 15mb for Notepad++). Just as fast and responsive as Notepad++.

The appearance is probably more customizable in Geany, but it's GTK.

Either one of these apps should give you what you need.

An alternative is Kate, but it's like 500mb. Still fast though, and it not only has tabbed, but windowed screens, which is useful (though most people probably would rather their window managers take charge of that outside of Windows).

Another alternative is VIM, if you're willing to learn all the key bindings. There is also a gui version of VIM.

Nick
0

You should definitely try it on Windows too and compare with other similar applications like Notepad++.

RemovedUser
2

My go to for coding nowadays. I'm still learning vim, I like integrating everything together without it building up in large sizes. It's fun. So basically what I'm trying to say, is that this application called Geany is very close to Notepad++. It's basically Notepad++ but more stable (if you know you know) with unfortunately less of a community for plugins in comparison to notepad++. That being said, there's always room open out there for more contribution to cool little nifty plugins. Though, the current plugins that you can find on the official documentation wiki for Geany itself are pretty essential kind of plugins alone. So yeah, have fun. This thing gets the job done like I want it to. I actually used to be quite skeptical of it back then, and by back then I mean 1-2 years ago. Software is cool.

Review by a new / low-activity user.
Paul
1

Probably the best open source GUI code editor / IDE. It's simple to configure, you can customize the UI and color scheme, and add plugins. It has autocompletion, syntax highlighting, etc. It's lightweight and fast, and it fits my needs perfectly.

AntumDeluge
0

An excellent cross-platform text editor with syntax highlighting support for code editing. If you are looking for something similar to Notepad++ for platforms other than Windows, this is probably the app you want. My only complaint is that it is not as lightweight on Windows as Notepad++, probably due to its dependency on Gtk+ libraries. Its configurations settings are also easier to navigate in my opinion.

7 of 22 comments

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What is Geany?

Geany is a powerful, stable and lightweight programmer's text editor that provides tons of useful features without bogging down your workflow. It runs on Linux, Windows and macOS is translated into over 40 languages, and has built-in support for more than 50 programming languages.

Fast & Small

One the primary reasons for Geany's existence is that there is a need for a decent, GUI, lightweight, cross-platform, flexible and powerful IDE/editor. Many editors meet one or more of these requirements but fall short on others.

Geany attempts to hit the sweet spot.

Great Community

Geany is Good Ol' Fashioned Free Software. Using the GPL v2 license, Geany assures that not only can you customize and hack it, but that everyone benefits from changes the community makes. Geany has a vibrant community of professionals and hobbyists alike that contribute improvements and fixes across numerous platforms including The Mailing Lists, Github, Matrix #geany:matrix.org, Mastodon and Twitter.

Easily Customizable

Many parts of Geany are heavily customizable like color themes (Geany Themes) or adding new filetypes. Furthermore, Geany provides many settings to let you adjust it to your needs and preferences.

Many Filetypes

Many supported filetypes including popular programming languages like C, Java, PHP, HTML, JavaScript, Python or Perl. But Geany also includes support for other useful filetypes like ini-style config files, Diff output, SQL files and many more.

Many Plugins

With Geany's plugin system, users can get more features into Geany and developers can easily add new features and/or improve existing ones.

Geany information

AlternativeTo Categories

DevelopmentOffice & Productivity

GitHub repository

  •  3,506 Stars
  •  641 Forks
  •  1186 Open Issues
  •   Updated  
View on GitHub

Our users have written 22 comments and reviews about Geany, and it has gotten 575 likes

Geany was added to AlternativeTo by dstclair on and this page was last updated .