Kate Alternatives for Mac

There are many alternatives to Kate for Mac if you are looking for a replacement. The best Mac alternative is Visual Studio Code, which is free. If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 100 alternatives to Kate and loads of them are available for Mac so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. Other interesting Mac alternatives to Kate are Sublime Text, VSCodium, Vim and Zed Editor.

filter to find the best alternatives

Kate alternatives are mainly Text Editors, but if you're looking for Code Editors or IDEs you can filter on that. Other popular filters include Mac and Linux. These are just examples - use the filter bar below to find more specific alternatives to Kate.
Copy a direct link to this comment to your clipboard
Kate alternatives page was last updated

Alternatives list

  1. Visual Studio Code icon
     1378 likes

    Free and extensible code editor with built-in Git support, smart IntelliSense, integrated debugger, 30,000+ extensions, works offline, supports markdown and syntax highlighting for numerous languages.

    203 Visual Studio Code alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Proprietary (MIT)

    Application types

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
    • Online
    • Chrome OS
    • Snapcraft
     
  2. Sublime Text icon
     2046 likes

    Powerful editor blending code, markup, and prose editing with enhanced features like multi-tab selection, side-by-side definition viewing, and multiple selection tools for swift code navigation.

    192 Sublime Text alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Freemium
    • Proprietary

    Application types

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
    • Flathub
    • Flatpak
    • Snapcraft
     
    |
    3
    Comments about Sublime Text as an Alternative to Kate
    Guest
    Positive
    0

    It's literally Kate except it costs money.

    Review by a new / low-activity user.
    No Mu
    Negative
    0

    Kate does more, apart from asking for money. Sublime Text is not subliminally open source, either.

    Review by a new / low-activity user.
    Guest
    Positive
    -1

    It looks identical to kate, with same functionalities. For me it's even better.

    Review by a new / low-activity user.
    Sublime Text icon
    Sublime Text icon
    • Sublime Text is Freemium and ProprietaryKate is Free and Open Source
    • Sublime Text is CustomizableKate is not according to our users
  3. VSCodium icon
     406 likes

    This repository contains a build file to generate FLOSS release binaries of Microsoft's Visual Studio Code - Open Source ("Code - OSS") project, the open source core of the proprietary Visual Studio Code.

    197 VSCodium alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source (MIT)

    Application types

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
    • Flathub
    • Electron
    • Snapcraft
    • Homebrew
    • Chocolatey
     
    |
    1
    Comments about VSCodium as an Alternative to Kate
    Centaro
    Positive
    0

    The fact that at some point Kate started being shipped without standard keyboard shortcuts for caret control got too annoying.

    VSCodium icon
    VSCodium icon
    • VSCodium is Free and Open SourceKate is also Free and Open Source
    • VSCodium is Customizable and Privacy focusedKate is not according to our users
  4. Vim icon
     1346 likes

    Vim ("Vi IMproved") is an advanced text editor that allows syntax highlighting, word completion and has a huge amount of contributed content. It also has a GUI version called GVim.

    214 Vim alternatives

    Cost / License

    Application types

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
    • BSD
    • Haiku
    • AmigaOS
    • OpenSolaris
    • MorphOS
    • Flathub
    • Flatpak
    • Snapcraft
     
  5. Zed Editor icon
     108 likes

    Blazing fast code editor offering real-time multi-user collaboration, language-aware syntax highlighting, integrated terminal, multi-buffers for tab-free editing, built-in Vim mode, searchable outline, AI coding assistance, advanced keyboard commands, and cross-platform support.

    90 Zed Editor alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Freemium
    • Open Source

    Application types

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
    • Flathub
    • Flatpak
     
  6. Geany icon
     575 likes

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

    154 Geany alternatives

    Cost / License

    Application types

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
    • BSD
    • Snapcraft
    • Flathub
    • PortableApps.com
    • Flatpak
    • Haiku
     
  7. Neovim icon
     187 likes

    Refactored version of Vim, simplifying maintenance, improving developer contributions, and enabling new user interfaces. Features extensible plugin architecture, lightweight resource usage, syntax highlighting, no registration, ad-free, and distraction-free mode.

    106 Neovim alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application types

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
    • Chocolatey
    • Flathub
    • Snapcraft
     
  8. GNU Emacs icon
     387 likes

    GNU Emacs is an extensible, customizable text editor—and more. At its core is an interpreter for Emacs Lisp, a dialect of the Lisp programming language with extensions to support text editing. The features of GNU Emacs include:

    181 GNU Emacs alternatives

    Cost / License

    Application types

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
    • Android
    • BSD
    • Snapcraft
    • F-Droid
    • Haiku
    • Debian
    • MacPorts
    • Homebrew
     
  9. gedit icon
     694 likes

    Official text editor of the GNOME desktop environment. Has syntax highlighting and is suitable for programming, with support for several languages. It is extensible with plugins.

    193 gedit alternatives

    Cost / License

    Application types

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
    • Chrome OS
    • BSD
    • GNOME
    • OpenSolaris
    • Flathub
     
    |
    1
    Comments about gedit as an Alternative to Kate
    Guest
    Positive
    1

    It's an alternative in every way, except Kate has a little bit more features, as it is a KDE app.

    Review by a new / low-activity user.
    gedit icon
    gedit icon
    • gedit is Free and Open SourceKate is also Free and Open Source
    • gedit is Customizable and Privacy focusedKate is not according to our users
  10. GNU nano icon
     290 likes

    GNU nano is a small and friendly text editor. Besides basic text editing, nano offers many extra features like an interactive search and replace, go to line and column number, auto-indentation, feature toggles, internationalization support, and filename tab completion.

    153 GNU nano alternatives

    Cost / License

    Application types

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
    • BSD
    • Haiku
     
12 of 72 Kate alternatives