Vim Alternatives for Mac

There are many alternatives to Vim for Mac if you are looking for a replacement. The best Mac alternative is Visual Studio Code, which is free. If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 100 alternatives to Vim and loads of them are available for Mac so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. Other interesting Mac alternatives to Vim are Sublime Text, Neovim, VSCodium and Zed Editor.

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Vim alternatives are mainly Text Editors, but if you're looking for Code Editors or IDEs you can filter on that. Other popular filters include Windows, Linux and Mac. These are just examples - use the filter bar below to find more specific alternatives to Vim.
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Alternatives list

  1. Zee icon
     Like

    Zee is a modern editor for the terminal, written in Rust. It is a highly experimental code. In the old tradition of text editor demos, here's what it currently looks like editing its own source code.

    Cost / License

    Application types

    Alerts

    • Discontinued

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
    • BSD
     
  2. Scribe icon
     1 like

    Vim-flavoured modal editor with the parts a writer actually needs and a few features vim never had. Single static binary, sub-10 ms startup, soft-wrap by default, Claude Code in the editor, syntax highlighting, hunspell spellcheck, Goyo-style reading mode, persistent registers...

    Cost / License

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
    • BSD
    • Rust
     
  3. Jottr icon
     2 likes

    A simple, opinionated plain text editor designed for writers, journalists and researchers. Jottr is not meant to be a full-featured text editor, but rather a simple and easy to use tool for writing. It's not aimed at developers.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
    • Flathub
    • Flatpak
     
  4. TEA icon
     7 likes

    TEA is free text editor for Linux, *BSD, OS/2, Windows, Haicu. It depends on Qt 4.6+ or Qt 5 or Qt6, zlib and, optionally, on Aspell or Hunspell. The old (but renewed) branch, TEA-GTK depends on GTK+ 3 and GtkSourceView 3.

    Cost / License

    Application types

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
     
  5. Tincta icon
     11 likes

    Tincta is an elegant one-window text editor that is intuitive to use on personal tasks like writing blog posts, letters or grocery lists. But it also has all functionality you need for professional web design and programming.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source (MIT)

    Application types

    Platforms

    • Mac
     
  6. NEdit icon
     9 likes

    NEdit is a multi-purpose text editor for the X Window System, which combines a standard, easy to use, graphical user interface with the thorough functionality and stability required by users who edit text eight hours a day.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application types

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
    • BSD
     
  7.  1 like

    McWig is a modal, Vim-like text editor written in Go.

    Cost / License

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Go (Programming Language)
    • Windows
    • Mac
    • Linux
     
  8. skEdit icon
     2 likes

    Simple, Flexible, Powerful Text Editor for the Web. Handles most common features you want; code completion, saved snippets, subversion support, remote connections, extensible language support, browser preview and much more.

    Cost / License

    • Paid
    • Proprietary

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Mac
     
  9.  1 like

    This is a portable version of the Mg editor from OpenBSD by an OpenBSD developer who did a bunch of overhaul work on the version of Mg found in the OpenBSD base system.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Linux
    • BSD
    • Cygwin
     
  10. Thunderpad icon
     10 likes

    Thunderpad (formerly Textpad) is a simple, general-purpose and cross-platform text editor written in C++ using the Qt libraries. Thunderpad aims to be faster and more lightweight than most text editors, but as useful as them.

    110 Thunderpad alternatives

    Cost / License

    Application types

    Alerts

    • Discontinued

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
     
  11. CodeBuddy icon
     1 like

    CodeBuddy IDE is built to create a symbiotic environment where product, design, development, and deployment flow into one another without friction. By embedding AI deeply into every step—from requirement planning and product design to coding and go-live—it delivers a one-stop...

    51 CodeBuddy alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Freemium
    • Proprietary

    Application types

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
     
  12. Hacker Pad icon
     1 like

    Hacker Pad is a convenient scratch pad that allows everyone, especially developer, to quickly jot down ideas and snippets. This comes from the need of my colleagues who struggle with how to quickly write down notes in a convenient way.

    114 Hacker Pad alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Paid
    • Proprietary

    Platforms

    • Mac
     
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