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 Package Control Multiple cursors ... 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

1722 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 Lightweight Syntax Highlighting ... Batch Editing Configurable Dedication to home row Keyboard focused 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

1064 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 Windows Linux BSD GNOME ... OpenSolaris
Lightweight Autocompletion Extensible by Plugins/Extensions Spell checking ... Syntax Highlighting Add a feature

630 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

202 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 Windows Linux
No features added Add a feature

214 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...
- Discontinued The program is no longer updated.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

282 Like
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...
- 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.
Free Open Source Mac Windows Linux
Support for FTP Real time collaboration Add a feature

325 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...

Commercial Mac Windows Linux
No features added Add a feature

147 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
Automatic Indentation Extensible by Plugins/Extensions Search and replace Syntax Highlighting ... Support for Themes Add a feature

248 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 ASCII to Hex Edit files without creating a project Lightweight ... Portable Add a feature

193 Like
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

46 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

156 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

83 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
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...
- 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
Free Mac
Search and replace Support for Unicode Add a feature

146 Like