GNU nano Alternatives and Similar Software

Alternatives to GNU nano for Windows, Linux, Mac, BSD, PortableApps.com and more. Filter by license to discover only free or Open Source alternatives. This list contains a total of 25+ apps similar to GNU nano.

GNU nano is a small and friendly text editor. If your looking for more info about GNU nano like screenshots, reviews and comments you should visit our info page about it. Below you find the best alternatives.

The list of alternatives was last updated: 3/25/2019 8:44:00 AM

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Alternatives to GNU nano for all platforms with any license

Notepad++

Notepad++ is a free source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Based on the powerful editing component Scintilla, Notepad++ is written in C++ and uses pure Win32 API and STL which ensures a higher execution speed and smaller program size. By optimizing as many routines as possible without losing user friendliness, Notepad++ is trying to reduce the world carbon dioxide emissions.
- Notepad++ is a GUI text editor not a command line Text editor. SecurityChecker • Jul 2018
Free Open Source Windows PortableApps.com
Lightweight Custom Language Definitions Portable Tabbed interface ... Auto-saving Autocompletion Block edit Built-in editor Code formatting Color coding Column edit mode Configurable Extensible by Plugins/Extensions Support for FTP Integrated Search Live Preview Multiple languages Multiple Open Tabs Plugin manager Support for regular expressions Side-by-Side comparison Add a feature

4281 Like
Visual Studio Code

Code combines the streamlined UI of a modern editor with rich code assistance and navigation, and an integrated debugging experience – without the need for a full IDE.

Free Open Source Mac Windows Linux Chrome OS Electron / Atom Shell
Extensible by Plugins/Extensions Lightweight Built-in Terminal Syntax Highlighting ... Autocompletion Customizable GIT support Intellisense Code completion Support for Javascript Multiple cursors Night mode/Dark Theme Bugs C# Scripting Code formatting Code navigation Color coding of code Electron based Embedded debugger Extensible by Plugins/Extensions Extensible by Plugins/Extensions Git integration MarkDown support Mercurial support Minimap PHP IDE Run Android Apps on Desktop Support for NodeJS Version and Source control Add a feature

590 Like
Atom

A hackable text editor for the 21st Century. At GitHub, we're building the text editor we've always wanted. A tool you can customize to do anything, but also use productively on the first day without ever touching a config file. Atom is modern, approachable, and hackable to the core. We can't wait to see what you build with it.
- gnu nano is a small command line editor, atom a big-ish GUI based superluminar • Mar 2018 • 5 agrees and 0 disagrees
Free Open Source Mac Windows Linux BSD Electron / Atom Shell
Extensible by Plugins/Extensions Customizable Support for Themes Package Control ... Community based GIT support Teletype Autocompletion Clean design Code completion Collaborative writing Extensible by Plugins/Extensions Extensible by Plugins/Extensions Folder Hierarchy Fuzzy Finder GitHub integration Gitlab integration Hackable Integrated Development Environment Interior Design Live collaboration Minimap Modular System Multiple languages Multiple cursors Support for Multiple programming languages Distraction-free UI Package Manager Plugin API Plugin manager Real time collaboration Separated workspaces Support for NodeJS Syntax Highlighting Tabbed interface Unit Testing Add a feature

933 Like
Sublime Text

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. Sublime Text may be downloaded and evaluated for free without an expiration time limit, however a license must be purchased for continued use.

Freemium $ $ $ Mac Windows Linux
Extensible by Plugins/Extensions Lightweight Package Control Multiple cursors ... Customizable Syntax Highlighting Auto-saving Autocompletion Automatic packaging Code completion Directory structure Fullscreen support Memory footprint Minimap Distraction-free UI Plugin API Portable Scriptwriting Assistant Syntax Highlighting Text editing Auto-Refresh Add a feature

1764 Like
Vim

Vim ("Vi IMproved") is an advanced text editor that allows syntax highlighting, word completion and has a huge amount of contributed content. Vim offers several “modes” for editing with efficiency. This makes vim a non-user-friendly application but it is also a strength. The normal mode binds alphanumeric keys to task-oriented commands. The visual mode highlights text. The command-line mode offers more tools (for search&replace, defining functions, etc.
- Even better editing/navigating experience, good memory footprint and minimal startup time. Guest • Sep 2018
Free Open Source Mac Windows Linux BSD Haiku ... OpenSolaris
Customizable Extensible by Plugins/Extensions Keyboard focused Lightweight ... Syntax Highlighting Batch Editing Configurable Dedication to home row Support for Large File Lightweight Mnemonic key bindings Modal editor Plugin manager Regex substitution Spell checking Terminal-based Visual Mode Word completion Add a feature

1102 Like
gedit

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 BSD GNOME ... OpenSolaris
Lightweight Autocompletion Extensible by Plugins/Extensions Spell checking ... Syntax Highlighting Add a feature

638 Like
Geany

Geany is a small and lightweight Integrated Development Environment. It was developed to provide a small and fast IDE, which has only a few dependencies from other packages. Another goal was to be as independent as possible from a special Desktop Environment like KDE or GNOME - Geany only requires the GTK2 runtime libraries.

Free Open Source Mac Windows Linux BSD PortableApps.com ... Xfce
Lightweight Support for Themes Automatic Indentation Built-in Terminal ... Code navigation Customizable Extensible by Plugins/Extensions Support for Large File Minimalistic Portable Shortcut keys Spell checking Syntax Highlighting Vim plugin Add a feature

484 Like
GNU Emacs

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: * Content-sensitive editing modes, including syntax coloring, for a variety of file types including plain text, source code, and HTML. * Complete built-in documentation, including a tutorial for new users.

Free Open Source Mac Windows Linux BSD
Customizable Extensible by Plugins/Extensions Package Control Scripting ... Self-documenting Syntax Highlighting Terminal-based Add a feature

303 Like
Kate

Text editor for the KDE desktop environment with support for multiple languages and syntax highlighting. It is extensible with plugins. Features a MDI interface. Kate is a multi document editor, based on a rewritten version of the kwrite editing widget of KDE, offering all the features of that plus a bunch of its own. Kate has been been moved to the kdesdk package in KDE4, and is a built-in part of your favorite desktop since release 2.2.

Free Open Source Windows Linux BSD KDE
Code formatting Support for regular expressions Syntax Highlighting Tabbed interface Add a feature

192 Like
Notepad2

Notepad2 is a fast and light-weight Notepad-like text editor with syntax highlighting. Simple as possible, but yet powerful. Has full Unicode support. Can be run out of the box without installation, and does not touch your system's registry.
- Discontinued The program is no longer updated. Last version, 4.2.25, released on October 28, 2012, can be still downloaded from the official website.
Free Open Source Windows PortableApps.com
Lightweight Portable Syntax Highlighting Add a feature

286 Like
Neovim

Neovim is a project that seeks to aggressively refactor Vim in order to: Simplify maintenance and encourage contributions. Split the work between multiple developers. Enable the implementation of new/modern user interfaces without any modifications to the core source. Improve extensibility with a new plugin architecture.

Free Open Source Mac Windows Linux Android BSD
Extensible by Plugins/Extensions Add a feature

54 Like
UltraEdit

UltraEdit is the ideal text, HTML and HEX editor, and an advanced PHP, Perl, Java and JavaScript editor for programmers. An industry-award winner, UltraEdit supports disk-based 64-bit file handling (standard) on 32-bit Windows platforms (Windows 2000 and later).

Commercial $ $ $ Mac Windows Linux
No features added Add a feature

149 Like
Notepad

Most simple text editor. Just plain text, saves in .txt format. Not available for download; bundled with all versions of Windows.

Free Windows
Lightweight Support for Unicode Bundled with Windows Add a feature

159 Like
PSPad

PSPad is a freeware programmers editor in 8 languages for Microsoft Windows operating systems. Some features are highlighted syntax, ftp, projects and so on. Code explorer for Pascal, C/C++, INI, HTML, XML, PHP and more in development, internal web browser with APACHE support. Installation contains templates for HTML, PHP, Pascal, JScript, VBScript, MySQL, MS-Dos, Perl. PSPad is useful for people who: - work with various programming environments.

Free Windows
Syntax Highlighting ASCII to Hex Edit files without creating a project Lightweight ... Portable Add a feature

195 Like
Micro

Micro is a terminal-based text editor that aims to be easy to use and intuitive, while also taking advantage of the full capabilities of modern terminals. It comes as one single, batteries-included, static binary with no dependencies, and you can download and use it right now. Features Easy to use Common keybindings (ctrl-s, ctrl-c, ctrl-v, ctrl-z...
- - beginner friendly - uses very sane keymap defaults (Ctrl-x, Ctrl-c, Ctrl-v) - short cut cheat sheet - excellent help build in - very capable text editor surehand53 • Jun 2018
Free Open Source Mac Windows Linux
Beginner friendly Sync with Simplenote Add a feature

24 Like
Notepad2-mod

Changes compared to the official Notepad2 Code folding Support for bookmarks Option to mark all occurrences of a word Word auto-completion Syntax highlighting support for AutoHotkey, AutoIt3, AviSynth, Bash, CMake, Inno Setup, LaTeX, Lua, Markdown, NSIS, Ruby, Tcl and YAML scripts Improved support for NFO ANSI art Support for replacing Windows Notepad using a clean, unintrusive registry-based method Other various minor changes and tweaks

Free Open Source Windows PortableApps.com
Portable Syntax Highlighting Support for Unicode Add a feature

48 Like
SciTE

SciTE is a SCIntilla based Text Editor. Originally built to demonstrate Scintilla, it has grown to be a generally useful editor with facilities for building and running programs. It is best used for jobs with simple configurations - I use it for building test and demonstration programs as well as SciTE and Scintilla, themselves. SciTE is currently available for Intel Win32 and Linux compatible operating systems with GTK+. It has been run on Windows XP and on Fedora 8 and Ubuntu 7.

Free Open Source Windows Linux BSD Xfce
No features added Add a feature

137 Like
AkelPad

A simple notepad-like text editor with many features. It is designed to be a small and fast. User interface in 20 languages.

Free Open Source Windows PortableApps.com
Code format coloring Portable Add a feature

84 Like
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Leafpad

Leafpad is a lightweight text editor that emphasizes simplicity. As development focuses on keeping weight down to a minimum, only the most essential features are implemented in the editor. Features: Codeset option (Some OpenI18N registered) Auto codeset detection (UTF-8 and some codesets) Unlimitted Undo/Redo Auto/Multi-line Indent Display line numbers Drag and Drop Printing

Free Open Source Mac Linux BSD Cygwin MacPorts
Drag n drop Lightweight Add a feature

62 Like
EmEditor

EmEditor is a fast Unicode 64bit text editor for Windows 10/7/Vista/XP/2000 supporting extremely large files (up to 248 GB), binary files, comparison, multiline editing, easy numbering, scriptable macros, CSV files, script keyword highlighting and much more. It is impressive fast for loading large files - e.g. it can open a 1.34 GB file in <9 seconds and be ready for editing right after.

Freemium $ $ $ Windows
Import CSV data Windows Explorer integration Support for Large File Support for Unicode Add a feature

66 Like
CotEditor

Syntax Highlighting: Colorize more than 50 pre-installed major languages like HTML, PHP, Python, Ruby or Markdown. You can also create your own settings. Scriptable: Make your own macro in your favorite language, whether it is Python, Ruby, Perl, PHP, UNIX shell, AppleScript or JavaScript. Outline Menu: Extract specified lines with the predefined syntax, and you can jump to the corresponding line.

Free Open Source Mac
macOS-like Colored Text File Versioning Add a feature

25 Like
Notepad3

Although the Windows operating system was updated significantly over the past years. However, the default Windows Notepad has not been updated in 20 years. If you need a text editor for simple programming tasks, using the vanilla Windows Notepad just does not cut it. Enter Notepad3! Therefore, we created Notepad3 with all the features that the default Windows Notepad currently lacks. Notepad3 is a fast and light-weight Scintilla-based text editor with syntax highlighting.

Free Open Source Windows
Lightweight Portable Support for regular expressions Search and replace ... Syntax Highlighting Support for Unicode Add a feature

11 Like
slap

slap is a Sublime-like terminal-based text editor that strives to make editing from the terminal easier. It has: * first-class mouse support * GUI editor-like keybindings * copying/pasting with OS clipboard support * undo/redo * syntax highlighting for many languages * a Sublime-like file sidebar * select word to highlight other occurrences; double-click to select word * easy-to-use finding with regex support * bracket matching * ...

Free Open Source Mac Windows Linux Node.JS
Command line interface Portable Syntax Highlighting Add a feature

22 Like
wxMEdit

wxMEdit is a cross-platform text and hex editor, derived from MadEdit . It adds automatic updates, bookmarks, selecting lines with a tripple click, a FreeBASIC syntax file, more supported encodings (L1, CP850, CP437 etc, KOI8, UTF-x), better Max OS X and Windows support, better hex editing support, nicer dialogs based on Code::Blocks wxSmith, more localizations, is a bit more stable and comes with an improved build system.

Free Open Source Mac Windows Linux BSD
Portable Add a feature

21 Like
Textadept

Textadept is a fast, minimalist, and ridiculously extensible cross-platform text editor for programmers. Written in a combination of C and Lua and relentlessly optimized for speed and minimalism over the years, Textadept is an ideal editor for programmers who want endless extensibility without sacrificing speed or succumbing to code bloat and featuritis.

Free Open Source Mac Windows Linux BSD
Command line interface Lua scripting Portable Syntax Highlighting Add a feature

28 Like