Nova Alternatives

Nova is described as 'The beautiful, fast, flexible, native Mac code editor from Panic' and is a Code Editor in the development category. There are more than 100 alternatives to Nova for a variety of platforms, including Windows, Mac, Linux, Web-based and BSD apps. The best Nova alternative is Notepad++, which is both free and Open Source. Other great apps like Nova are Visual Studio Code, Sublime Text, VSCodium and Vim.

More about Nova

Nova alternatives page was last updated Jun 8, 2026

Vim Classic
5 likes
Vim Classic is a fork of Vim 8.x for long-term maintenance, providing a stable, dependable editor — maintained entirely by humans.
Cost / License
Free
Open Source
Application types
Code Editor
Text Editor
Origin
Netherlands
EU
Platforms
Mac
Windows
Linux
BSD
Haiku
AmigaOS
OpenSolaris
MorphOS
Is Vim Classic a good alternative to Nova?
BBEdit
48 likes
BBEdit is a professional HTML and text editor for the Macintosh. Specifically crafted in response to the needs of Web authors and software developers, this award-winning product provides an abundance of high-performance features for editing, searching, and manipulation of text.
123 BBEdit alternatives
Cost / License
Freemium
Proprietary
Application types
Code Editor
Text Editor
Origin
United States
Platforms
Mac
Is BBEdit a good alternative to Nova?
Icecoder
25 likes
A lightweight yet powerful IDE/code editor that comes in both Web and desktop editions, the latter written with PHP and including choices for several platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac).
Cost / License
Free
Open Source
Application types
Code Editor
IDE
Origin
United Kingdom
Alerts
Discontinued
Platforms
Mac
Windows
Linux
Online
Self-Hosted
Is Icecoder a good alternative to Nova?
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Adobe Dreamweaver
Advanced web authoring tool supports designing and coding tasks from a visual perspective and backs it up with robust coding. Offers live preview, customizable templates, endless design options, and tools like drag-and-drop visua...

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Light Table
61 likes
Light Table is a new interactive IDE that lets you modify running programs and embed anything from websites to games. It provides the real time feedback we need to not only answer questions about our code, but to understand how our programs really work.
Cost / License
Free
Open Source (MIT)
Application type
IDE
Alerts
Discontinued
Platforms
Mac
Windows
Linux
Electron / Atom Shell
+3
Is Light Table a good alternative to Nova?
Xed Editor
5 likes
Xed Editor is a versatile text and code editor designed specifically for Android devices, offering users the ability to create, edit, and manage their text and code files with ease on their mobile devices.
Cost / License
Free
Open Source (GPL-3.0)
Application types
Text Editor
Code Editor
Platforms
Android
F-Droid
+2
Is Xed Editor a good alternative to Nova?
RubyMine
38 likes
Comprehensive IDE specialized for Ruby and Rails, offering smart code completion, advanced navigation, error analysis, refactoring tools, integrated debugging, test frameworks, and web development support alongside extensive VCS integration and plugin extensibility.
Cost / License
Free Personal
Proprietary
Application types
IDE
Code Editor
Origin
Czechia
EU
Platforms
Mac
Windows
Linux
Is RubyMine a good alternative to Nova?
Kompad
1 like
Open source note application with desktop, web, and mobile web access features intuitive file organization, folder grouping, color-coded tags, side panel search, auto updates, word and character counts, reading time estimates, and customizable themes.
Cost / License
Free
Open Source (MIT)
Origin
Vietnam
Platforms
Windows
Is Kompad a good alternative to Nova?
jEdit
115 likes
jEdit is a mature programmer's text editor with hundreds (counting the time developing plugins) of person-years of development behind it. jEdit beats many expensive development tools for features and ease of use AND it is released as free software with full source code...
Cost / License
Free
Open Source
Application types
Code Editor
Text Editor
Origin
International
Platforms
Mac
Windows
Linux
Is jEdit a good alternative to Nova?
Textastic
16 likes
Textastic is an advanced code editor for iOS and macOS with support for syntax highlighting, remote file transfer, and SSH.
71 Textastic alternatives
Cost / License
Paid
Proprietary
Application types
Code Editor
Text Editor
Origin
Germany
EU
Platforms
Mac
iPhone
iPad
+9
Is Textastic a good alternative to Nova?
Programmer's Notepad
64 likes
Notepad more focused on developing than just scribble down notes.

These is not an exhaustive feature list, but gives you some idea of the features present in Programmer’s Notepad.

Syntax Highlighting for lots of languages, configured with schemes

Multi-language use.

133 Programmer's Notepad alternatives
Cost / License
Free
Open Source
Application types
Code Editor
Text Editor
Origin
United Kingdom
Alerts
Discontinued
Platforms
Windows
+7
Is Programmer's Notepad a good alternative to Nova?
Vampirio Code
1 like
Vampirio Code is a versatile open source editor and IDE with syntax highlighting and multi-language compilation, integrated with various compilers and tools.
Cost / License
Free
Open Source
Application types
Code Editor
Text Editor
Origin
Argentina
Platforms
Windows
+2
Is Vampirio Code a good alternative to Nova?
CSSEdit
60 likes
CSSEdit is a visual cascading style sheet editor built-in Espresso , with CSS3 support for multi-browser gradients, shadows and more.
Cost / License
Paid
Proprietary
Application type
Code Editor
Origin
Belgium
EU
Platforms
Mac
Espresso
Is CSSEdit a good alternative to Nova?