Windows Notepad is not available for Mac but there are plenty of alternatives that runs on macOS with similar functionality. The best Mac alternative is Sublime Text, which is free. If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 100 alternatives to Windows Notepad and loads of them are available for Mac so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. Other interesting Mac alternatives to Windows Notepad are Vim, gedit, Kate and GNU Emacs.
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.
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.
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.
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 text editor application.
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:
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.
CudaText is a cross-platform text editor, written in Lazarus / Free Pascal.
TextMate brings Apple's approach to operating systems into the world of text editors. By bridging UNIX underpinnings and GUI, TextMate cherry-picks the best of both worlds to the benefit of expert scripters and novice users alike.
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).
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...
Syntax Highlighting: Colorize more than 50 pre-installed major languages like HTML, PHP, Python, Ruby or Markdown. You can also create your own settings.
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.
Leafpad is not a good alternative as it relies on the GTK library, unless you're looking for non-Windows apps, and you don't mind if the application has external dependencies.
Very similar to Windows Notepad.
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It works, even on very large text files. Not all these alternatives do work.