Lite XL
52 likes
Lite XL is a lightweight text editor written mostly in Lua — it aims to provide something practical, pretty, small and fast, implemented as simply as possible; easy to modify and extend, or to use without doing either.
Features
Properties
- Lightweight
- Support for Themes
- Customizable
- Distraction-free
- Privacy focused
Features
- Extensible by Plugins/Extensions
- Dark Mode
- Syntax Highlighting
- Works Offline
- Multiple Cursors
- Hackable
- Portable
- Support for scripting
- Community-based
- Full-Text Search
- Code Formatting
- Code Completion
- Autocompletion
- Support for MarkDown
- No registration required
- Ad-free
- No Tracking
Tags
- lua
Lite XL News & Activities
Highlights All activities
Recent News
No news, maybe you know any news worth sharing?
Share a News TipRecent activities
OrdinaryPerson added Lite XL as alternative to Visual Code Space- JLR31 liked Lite XL
vampiriostudio added Lite XL as alternative to Vampirio Code
Featured in Lists
This is a list that prefers open-source and lightweight Windows applications. A few partially open-source or …
List by Sam Lander with 65 apps, updated
What is Lite XL?
Lite XL is a lightweight text editor written mostly in Lua — it aims to provide something practical, pretty, small and fast, implemented as simply as possible; easy to modify and extend, or to use without doing either. Lite XL has support for high DPI displays on Windows and Linux and it supports retina displays on macOS. Additional functionality can be added through plugins.
Lite XL information
Developed by
UnknownLicensing
Open Source (MIT) and Free product.Written in
Rating
Average rating of 4.6Alternatives
58 alternatives listedSupported Languages
- English
AlternativeTo Categories
Development, Office & ProductivityGitHub repository
- 5,868 Stars
- 283 Forks
- 311 Open Issues
- Updated
Comments and Reviews
Finally. A simple to assimilate IDE, which is actually lite and resources, and isn't just another electron-based one.
Lite XL is quickly becoming my go-to lightweight editor, edging out the long-trusted Notepad++. Written mostly in Lua, it boots in a flash, and keeps its footprint small enough to stay truly portable. Yet it still checks off the modern niceties, and a polished, distraction-free UI that feels more refined than you’d expect from something 6mb with a portable install.
It's also extensible. Project and folder navigation is an intuitive tree structure, like you'd find an a markdown editor (or Windows explorer), making multi-file work as frictionless as in heavier IDEs, but without the bloat.
Lightweight and fast, but too many of its features are hidden behind shortcut keys which cannot be accessed/learned by going through a menu. Some common features are also kinda broken (e.g. regex search automatically escapes backslashes, preventing searches for e.g. 'nul' (\0), etc).
It's fine to have shortcuts. Just make there also be a menu. Or an option for a menu. Bonus points for having the menu say what the shortcut is so that I can learn it by doing the thing, without it actually slowing me down by making me go to the website to hopefully figure it out, on the off chance that it's not just a feature you don't have.
In the page that's visible when there are no files open you can find a few of the most important shortcuts, like opening a file or a directory. There is also the shortcut to open the command palette. From the command palette you can search all the available commands, and on the right you can see the shortcuts to execute them.
Regarding your issue with search, keep in mind that regex isn't enabled by default, so you need to toggle it with the shortcut that's shown just under the search box. With regex enabled I'm able to search for things like \t and \n without any problem.
Excellent text editor. Launches quickly, has good plugins, and quite easy to configure.
A solid 5 stars. What a badass little editor. Starts up in a couple of milliseconds. Portable. Customizable. Super easy to grok (understand) and surprisingly feature-rich, especially given its size ... a whopping 3 MB download as of this writing.
It sports extremely fast file & text search (yes, fuzzy search that's smarter than the average run-of-the-mill crap search in other programs). And the Autocomplete, that would even let you complete after 1 character (not sure if recommended but that's I like and I haven't noticed any kind of lag whatsoever, but as a disclaimer I haven't tried it with larger files yet).
Another great, great feature is the split-screening! You'll notice a lot of usability-thought went into the app, such as split-screen where it's as easy as dragging tabs around. Yes, that's mouse-dragging – not some arcane Vim or Emacs malarkey, however that's probably possible to set up if Vim/Emacs mnemonics is your cup of tea.
I'd even place this app in the rarest, most commendable category, "micro-sized powerhouse that somehow also manages to blow the competition in terms of functionality" – right there next to gems like Blender and the Reaper DAW.
lightweight + portable + distraction free (vscode pretty good alternative)
I'm using it for fast, single-file edit - when there's no need for opening a project in heavy VSCodium.