Top 10 Free Text Editors for macOS 10.15 Catalina

Elise Williams

2024-04-12 10:55:47 • Filed to: macOS 10.15 • Proven solutions

If you use text editors a lot, you may find the built in macOS 10.15 text editor a little lacking in terms of features. Fortunately, there are a lot of free options you can download and use. The following are just 10 of the best we could find.

Top 10 Free Text Editors for macOS 10.15

1. Sublime Text 3

This is one of the most popular text editors for Mac OS X 10.15 and the reason is very simple; it has a lot of very useful features. For example, it is a very easy to use, has features that allow for folding and syntax highlighting and it has a very high level of customization. These features come at a cost since although the Sublime Text 3 has a free trial version; the premium version is very expensive.

Pros

It is very easy to use
Has a lot of useful features
It offers numerous customization options
Allows users to assign custom keyboard shortcuts

Cons

Some of the plugins you have to use with this editor may affect its performance
At $80 the premium version may be out of reach for many

Free Download Sublime Text 3

2. Brackets

Brackets is another very popular plain text editor for macOS 10.15. It is particularly beloved by web designers and was designed by Adobe. One of Brackets' best features is the "Live Preview" feature that allows a live view of how CSS or HTML code appears in Chrome.

Pros

It is free and open source
It has a variety of free extensions to expand functionality
It has a lot of great features
Lightweight and easy to install

Cons

It is useful mostly to front-end developers
It doesn't have some fundamental useful commands you'd find on an ordinary text editor

Free Download Brackets

3. Atom

Atom is a free text editor for Mac Catalina that has features as good and as useful as Sublime Text 3 but is completely free to use. It is also Open Source, which means it will be completely free to use and continues to be upgraded to include even more useful features. It is built on JavaScript, CSS, HTML Node.js integration and runs on Electron.

Pros

It is completely free to use and open source
Has a lot of features found on some premium tools
It user interface is very pleasant
Has a lot of customization options

Cons

It has too many packages that can slow it down
Can take up too many resources on your Mac

Free Download Atom

4. UltraEdit

If you are looking for a text editor that is versatile UltraEdit is the best tool for you. It supports a large variety of languages including JavaScript, Python, Perl, PHP and many more. But it is a relatively older text editor, having been released 25 years ago and this age could raise reliability concerns.

Pros

It supports numerous languages
It is regularly updated
It is fast and easy to use
Can handle large files easily

Cons

At $99.95 for the premium version it is pricey
You may have to purchase some features separately

Free Download UltraEdit

5. BBEdit 12

Developed by Bare Bones software, BBEdit is another text editor for Mac that has been around for quite a while. It has dozens of customization options and numerous very useful features including built-in tools used for text manipulations.

Pros

It is very reliable and dependable despite its age
It offers great performance
It has a variety of built-in tools and languages
It is fast and very easy to use

Cons

The premium version will cost you $49

Free Download BBEdit 12

6. Coda 2/ Nova

Coda 2 is a text editor that is designed for web developers and as such you will find that it has multiple useful features for web developers. These features include code folding, syntax highlighting, indentation guides, find and replace and project- wide autocomplete among others. This text editor recently received an upgrade, allowing it to perform faster and adding new features to its already great arsenal of features.

Pros

It has a very useful search function that is also very reliable
It allows users to access and edit files remotely
Designed for web developers with features that can help make their work easier

Cons

It has limited features when compared to similar editors
At $99 the premium version is very expensive

Free Download Coda 2/ Nova

7. Textastic

This is a text editor that combines power and a simple to use, friendly interface. This makes it the ideal tool for beginners although some of its powerful features may be ideal for every level of user. It comes packed with features, but perhaps the most useful is the ability to work in multiple tabs.

Pros

It supports a large number of scripts and markup languages
Allows users to work with multiple features
Can sync with iCloud

Cons

It may not be as powerful as the other tools on this list
It lacks SSH and Python support

Free Download Textastic

8. TextMate

This is another simple to use text editor that may be appealing to both novices and expert users alike. It has powerful project management features and a simple to use interface to allow users to find those features quickly.

Pros

It is Open Source
It works with Xcode
Lightweight and easy to install

Cons

At $56.25 the premium version is quite costly

Free Download TextMate

9. Visual Studio Code

This Microsoft text editor's features are so compatible with the Mac that users don't feel any different than when using it on Windows. Its main features include a fast source-code editor, a keyboard centric code editing approach and being able to highlight syntax for 30 different languages.

Pros

It is free to use
Supports a lot of languages
It has a simple and easy to understand user interface
It is updated regularly and has various plugins for added performance

Cons

It can be a bit complicated to learn how to use
You may have to install too many plugins to get all the features you want

Free Download Visual Studio Code

10. CodeRunner 2

This is a text editor that is specifically designed for Mac users and one of the most affordable Mac text editors in the market. It supports a wide range of languages and a lot of features while somehow remaining lightweight and very easy to use.

Pros

It supports a lot of different languages
It has a clean and simple to use interface
It is highly customizable
Has all the necessary IDE features

Cons

It may not be the ideal to use for big projects or big files
It has numerous features but not as much as the other premium tools on this list

Free Download CodeRunner 2

Best PDF Editor for macOS 10.15

If you use text editors on a daily basis, chances are that you may also need a PDF editor. One of the best PDF editors to use for any project is PDFelement. This tool is designed to make it easier for you to not just create, but also manage and edit PDFs with ease. PDFelement allows users to carry out several functions including converting PDF documents to several other formats including Text, HTML, Word and many others.

TRY IT FREE TRY IT FREE

Some of the features that make PDFelement the best tool include the following;

It has highly effective editing tools to help you edit text, images, pages, links and watermarks on any PDF document
An OCR function is very useful for converting scanned PDFs into editable formats
You can use PDFelement for Mac to annotate a PDF document in numerous ways including commenting, highlighting, adding stamps, filling and drawing
It also comes with numerous document protection features for documents with sensitive information. You can add a digital signature or password protect the PDF
It allows you to easily print and share a PDF document
Additional document creation, merging and numbering features make it a complete PDF editing suite
It can also be used to convert PDFs to a variety of other formats including Word, TXT, HTML, PowerPoint and Excel among others