Alternatives to TextEdit for all platforms with any license

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. ...

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

1699 Like
Vim

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...

Free Open Source Mac Windows Linux BSD Haiku ... OpenSolaris
Customizable Extensible by Plugins/Extensions Syntax Highlighting Batch Editing ... Configurability Dedication to home row Keyboard focused Lightweight Mnemonic key bindings Modal editor Plugin manager Spell checking Terminal-based Visual Mode Word completion Works on all OSs Add a feature

1042 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...

Free Open Source Mac OS X Windows Linux BSD GNOME ... OpenSolaris
Lightweight Autocompletion Extensible by Plugins/Extensions Spell checking ... Syntax Highlighting Add a feature

625 Like
GNU nano

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...

Free Open Source Mac Windows Linux BSD Haiku
Command line interface Automatic Indentation Search and replace Terminal-based Add a feature

200 Like
Komodo Edit

Komodo Edit is a fast, smart, free and open-source code editor. Switching your trusty code editor is hard, but give Komodo Edit (or its big brother...

Free Open Source Mac OS X Windows Linux
No features added Add a feature

210 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...

Free Open Source Windows PortableApps.com
Lightweight Portable Syntax Highlighting Add a feature

280 Like
- Discontinued The program is no longer updated.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.
Aptana Studio

Aptana Studio is a complete web development environment that combines powerful authoring tools with a collection of online hosting and collaboration services that help...

Free Open Source Mac OS X Windows Linux
Support for FTP Real time collaboration Add a feature

326 Like
- Discontinued Aptana is still in development on GitHub but latest version, 3.6.1, was released in October 2014. It lacks Java 8/9 features, as well as newer Javascript and HTML 5 features.
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...

Commercial Mac OS X Windows Linux
No features added Add a feature

145 Like
TextMate

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...

Commercial $ $ $ Open Source Mac OS X
Automatic Indentation Extensible by Plugins/Extensions Search and replace Syntax Highlighting ... Support for Themes Add a feature

246 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...

Free Windows
Syntax Highlighting Edit files without creating a project Lightweight Portable Add a feature

191 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
Support for Unicode Bundled with Windows Add a feature

153 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...

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

135 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. Features * Single window (SDI)...

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

80 Like
TextWrangler

TextWrangler is the powerful general purpose text editor, and Unix and server administrator’s tool. At its most basic, a text editor is a tool for simply editing...

Free Mac OS X
Search and replace Support for Unicode Add a feature

145 Like
- Discontinued The developers announced that development of TextWrangler has stopped, in favor of concentrating their efforts on the development of BBEdit. Quoted from the TextWrangler webpage, "We are sunsetting TextWrangler, and we encourage anyone interested in TextWrangler to download and use BBEdit instead."
- syntax coloring, compare document versions, and powerful search and replace. davecortright • Mar 2017
Notepad2-mod

A modified version (fork) of Notepad2 based on Kai Liu's and other people's patches.

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

40 Like