Leafpad Alternatives for Mac
There are many alternatives to Leafpad for Mac if you are looking to replace it. The most popular Mac alternative is 
Visual Studio Code, which is free. If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 50 alternatives to Leafpad and many of them are available for Mac so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. Other interesting Mac alternatives to Leafpad are 
Atom (Free, Open Source), 
Sublime Text (Paid), 
Vim (Free, Open Source) and 
gedit (Free, Open Source).
- VS Code is more than just a code editor, it provides the tools and extensions to compile, debug, compare, refactor, and even manage code repositories all within a...
- Free
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- Chrome OS
- Electron / Atom Shell
- Extensible, cross-platform text editor with a rich ecosystem of plugins and themes.
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- Chrome OS
- BSD
- Electron / Atom Shell
- Sublime Text is a sophisticated text editor for code, html and prose - any kind of text file. You'll love the slick user interface and extraordinary features.
- 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.
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- BSD
- Haiku
- AmigaOS
- OpenSolaris
- MorphOS
rescuezilla I love vim, but it has an extremely steep learning curve and is terminal-based. Leafpad is a grandma-friendly graphical application for viewing and editing plain text files (in other words notepad.exe for Linux).Leafpad is GUI and very simple. Vim is a terminal based power tool. They are completely incomparable. - 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.
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- Chrome OS
- BSD
- GNOME
- OpenSolaris
- Brackets is an open-source editor for web design and development built on top of web technologies such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
Discontinued
The last version 1.14.2 has no .deb version for Linux, and seems to crash on Mac when launching. More generally, the development of the project seems to be paused or stopped.
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- Electron / Atom Shell
- Binary releases of Visual Studio Code without Microsoft branding, telemetry and licensing.
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- Electron / Atom Shell
- GNU nano is a small and friendly text editor.
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- BSD
- Haiku
rescuezilla Nano is not a drop-in Leafpad replacement, but definitely suitable for users willing to use a terminal to view and edit plain text. It's lightweight and provides clear explanation on how to save/exit files. Nano is a great application for newbie Linux users to editing configuration files on headless machines like routers and server, since they don't need the advanced features and learning curve of Vim/vi. - The Kate project develops two main products: KatePart, the advanced editor component which is used in numerous KDE applications requiring a text editing component, and Kate, a MDI...
- GNU Emacs is an extensible, customizable text editor—and more.
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- BSD
- Homebrew
Leafpad is a simple GUI editor anyone can use. Emacs is a great power tool but is overkill for anything Leafpad would be appropriate for.