A good text editor is essential for anyone who wants to build websites or get into coding. If you’re a Mac user, you’ve got a huge range of options in this field.

In this guide, we’ll take a look at the best free HTML text editors for Mac, as well as the top choices for those that prefer a paid app instead.

Best Free HTML Text Editors for Mac

Which is probably why there are a lot of free text editors, as well as great paid text editors out there, and to save you from the time consuming (and often confusing) task of choosing the right text editor for your use, we’ve picked out the 10 best text editors for Mac that are actually worthy of your attention. Sublime Text is a cross-platform code editor for Mac, Windows, and Linux. It comes with all the features you would expect from a powerful code editor and then some more. It looks beautiful and you can tweak the appearance to make it more comfortable for you.

The following is a list of completely free text editors for Mac, with no paid upgrades or extra purchases. You might think that free means “lacking in features,” but that’s not the case with these.

Atom

Atom makes a strong claim as the best free text editor for Mac. It’s an open source project from hosting and version control maestro GitHub. Don’t let the lack of a price tag put you off; Atom has some serious potential under the hood.

Describing itself as “a hackable editor for the 21st century,” Atom is a great starting point for beginners. It’s a basic text editor out of the box, with optional packages that add more complex functionality.

There’s support for Git and GitHub, with no need for additional packages. When you want to add features and language support, there’s a package manager that makes this easy. You can also customize the interface to your liking.

One standout package is Teletype for Atom, a real-time collaboration feature that allows you to work on projects with others. Atom is also cross-platform, so you can switch operating systems while maintaining familiarity with your favorite editor.

Download:Atom (Free)

Visual Studio Code

Like Atom, Visual Studio Code is a comprehensive app that excels as an HTML editor. Not to be confused with Visual Studio, Microsoft’s full-power IDE, VS Code is a lightweight text and script editor built around the concept of expanding support with plugins.

There are plugins for writing and running shell scripts in Code, for penning Markdown documents, and even writing AppleScript. That’s right; you can use Microsoft’s text editor to create scripts that will only work on Apple machines.

The Visual Studio Code marketplace turns the app into a Swiss Army knife of code, text, and script editing. A reliance on plugins means the app is lightweight and responsive from the start, as you won’t lug around features and functionality you’re never going to use.

Which plugins are worth getting? Our roundup of the best Visual Studio Code plugins will answer that for you. Also check out our top tips for boosting productivity in Visual Studio Code to learn more.

Download:Visual Studio Code (Free)

TextWrangler

TextWrangler is one of the most user-friendly examples of a free HTML editor for Mac. Hosted on the Mac App Store, TextWrangler offers an old-school feel and rock-solid performance.

It’s another great entry point for anyone learning to code or use text editors in general, whether you’re writing simple AppleScript projects, editing CSS, or building a website in HTML. It’s also a good alternative to macOS’ built-in editor TextEdit.

The app isn’t just a stripped-down freebie though. It offers a wealth of powerful tools like grep pattern matching, multi-file search and replace, varied themes, and syntax coloring options. You can also work on files remotely via FTP and SFTP.

It lacks some of the fancier features seen in the premium packages, notably a preview pane to view changes in real time. It feels and behaves like a native macOS app, which makes it particularly user-friendly compared to some of the other choices here.

Download:TextWrangler (Free)

Vim

Next up is something completely different. Vim is a command line-based plain text editor that comes with macOS. Simply open Terminal, type vim, and hit Enter. You’re now using one of the most respected text editors of all time, but it has a steep learning curve.

Fortunately, Vim comes with a stack of documentation to help you learn how to use it. This includes quick reference and help documents, plus a 30-minute tutorial to get you up and running. Be warned: even figuring out how to access the tutorials is a lesson for those unfamiliar with the command line.

You can add new features to Vim How to Add Top Features From Other Text Editors to VimUsing the Vim text editor but wishing it was as functional as other text editors? Here's how to install new features in Vim. Read More and accomplish a lot with it if you know how to use it properly. This knowledge won’t come overnight, but in a few years you’ll likely be able to accomplish more than in a comparable GUI-based application.

Despite Vim being built into the OS, you might also be interested in MacVim. This is a slightly more user-friendly port, with full menu bar controls for functions and a more up-to-date version of Vim than that maintained by Apple. It’s slightly less intimidating for newbies.

Download:MacVim (Free)

GNU Emacs

Another great free option with an off-putting learning curve, GNU Emacs is the “free as in libre” version of the Emacs text editor. First released in 1976, Emacs is one of the longest-running open source projects, and it still receives updates today.

Emacs is known for its unique methods of getting work done. It relies on a programming language known as Emacs-Lisp, a fork of the Lisp language that was originally specified in 1958. You’ll need to use Emacs-Lisp for even the most basic functions of editing, but it’s also used to expand the editor beyond its humble text-based roots.

These expansions include an email client, news reader, file manager, and games like Snake and Tetris. Under the hood, though, it’s still a basic text editor with features like context-aware editing and support for syntax coloring. There’s full Unicode support and a packaging system for adding new features.

Like Vim, Emacs requires a commitment to learning how to use it long before you’ll understand why so many people swear by it.

Download:GNU Emacs (Free)

Best Premium HTML Text Editors for Mac

Download Why Soda Is The Best Text Editor For Mac

If you’re looking for a text editor to use at work, or you’re at a stage where your tools can have a serious impact on your productivity and paycheck, you should consider one of these. They all come with a decent free evaluation period, so you can try before you buy.

Sublime Text

Sublime Text markets itself as a code, markup, and prose editor. It’s pricey, although the never-ending trial period lets you make sure it’s right for you before you buy.

For those who need a powerful tool, Sublime Text delivers a wealth of features and functions. Some of these are hallmarks of the app, like Goto Anything, which lets you open a file and quickly navigate to the relevant line in record speed.

The app creates a project-wide index of all classes used for references, plus it supports multiple selections so you can change more than one element at a time. To cut down on the time you spend in menus, developers devised the Command Palette for rarely-used functions, and fast project switching with no save prompts.

There’s a vast amount of customizability at your fingertips. Many favor the app for its smooth performance under load and attractive UI. It’s also cross-platform, and you only need a single license to use the app across all your machines and platforms.

Download:Sublime Text ($80)

TextMate

Powerful, simple, and lightweight, TextMate is the preferred choice of many Mac professionals, and it’s not hard to see why. This editor has support for a range of languages and syntax, tabs, and a language-specific approach that can save you time and effort.

TextMate incorporates snippets, macros, and scoping features that vastly speed up workflow without stepping into full IDE territory. The developer aimed to bring “Apple’s approach to operating systems into the world of text editors” and that’s a fairly good summation of why so many love TextMate.

Despite development stalling from time to time, TextMate maintains a die-hard following of professional users. This has given way to an extensive database of TextMate documentation and screencasts for TextMate, which should help new users get up to speed.

It’s a simple tool to start using, with a clean UI and fair price point. TextMate is actually open source and free to use, though you should buy a license if you want to use it long-term.

Download:TextMate ($56)

BBEdit

BBEdit wouldn’t have earned a place on this list if it weren’t for a large userbase that defends it to the death. And that’s just fine, since BBEdit is a mature and powerful plain text editor that prioritizes performance and reliability above all else.

It’s the quintessential Mac text editor and comes from the same developers as TextWrangler. Despite lacking the freshness of Atom or the crisp UI seen in Sublime Text, BBEdit is built from the ground up for macOS, optimized for the platform, and takes a Mac approach to text editing.

That means keyboard shortcuts that make sense to the average Mac user, as well as an approach to text editing that follows many of Apple’s design sensibilities. It also bakes in support for Mac technologies like Bonjour. This removes some barriers for entry seen in other apps, but results in a slightly more cumbersome UI than its rivals.

BBEdit is perfect for HTML and text editing, with support for remote editing via FTP/SFTP. The app is highly customizable, from syntax coloring to menu options, user-defined functions, keyboard shortcuts, and macOS Terminal support right in the app.

Download:BBEdit ($49.99)

Espresso

Not everyone uses their text editor for building websites, but many who do gravitate toward Espresso. It’s an editor aimed squarely at web developers, and it’s got powerful features to make creating websites a more productive experience.

The big one is a live preview browser, so you can see your changes in real time. The app incorporates Xray layout tools, plus CSSEdit visual styling for colors, gradients, shadows, and more. It supports HTML, CSS, LESS, JavaScript, CoffeeScript, Apache, and XML out of the box. More languages are available through plugins.

There’s a laundry list of features that keeps people coming back. These include customizable snippets and UI, a clean modern design, custom spacing and indentation to keep your code clean, support for tabs, templates and custom templates, powerful find and replace, and multi-line editing for making changes in multiple locations at once.

It’s not cheap at $99, but you can download a trial and see how it works before you commit. It’s a great tool for web developers, but lacking in other areas like scripting and coding.

Download:Espresso ($99)

More Mac Text Editors to Consider

There are so many text editors available that we couldn’t possibly include them all, but we thought these were worth a mention if you’re still on the hunt:

• Brackets (Free): Adobe’s free text editor is worth a look if neither Atom or VS Code work out for you.
• Sandvox ($80): A WYSIWYG HTML editor for Mac that’s both accessible and more affordable than pro tools like Dreamweaver.
• RapidWeaver ($80): Another WYSIWYG tool that allows you to quickly build good-looking websites.
• Smultron ($10): A better-than-free text editor with a tidy interface that won’t break the bank.

What is the best HTML text editor? It isn’t necessarily the one with the most features; it’s the one that fits best with how you work. We’d recommend testing out a few before you settle on a decision.

Once you’ve picked out an app, you might want to start brushing up on your HTML. Take a look at our guide to HTML code samples you can learn quickly 17 Simple HTML Code Examples You Can Learn in 10 MinutesWant to create a basic webpage? Learn these HTML examples and try them out in a text editor to see how they look in your browser. Read More , then download our essential CSS cheat sheet for free to get your sites looking better than ever.

The best free and paid text editor programs for Mac whether you're a web developer, programmer, technical writer, or anything in between!

Word processors like Microsoft Word and Apple's own Pages software are just dandy if you want to write a college paper or fax a cover sheet, but their focus is on page layout and text formatting. Text editors are an entirely different story. Text editors are much more helpful if you're editing code, creating web pages, doing text transformation or other things for which a word processor is just overkill. Here's a roundup of the best ones you can get for your Mac at the moment.

Also, if you're looking for editing software for the iPad, make sure to check out our Best writing apps for iPad roundup.

To start the list, here's a roundup of three free text editors that I think are worth your time. Each of them caters to a different audience: Brackets is great for the DIY crowd, while TextWrangler is a great multi-purpose general text editor. TextMate 2 has a lot of fans that prefer it to TextWrangler's big brother, BBEdit, for aesthetic and occasionally philosophical reasons.

Download Why Coda Is The Best Text Editor For Macbook

Brackets

Brackets is an open-source text editor aimed at web designers and developers, and it's actually maintained by Adobe, of all people. It's developed using HTML, CSS and JavaScript, and as the developers put it, 'if you can code in Brackets, you can code on Brackets.' And that's largely the idea: developers more than anyone have an idea of how they want to work, so why not provide them with a framework to do so?

The software features a quick inline editor so you can view your changes on the fly, thumbnail image previews, navigation and debugging tools, and more. It's an early release and very much a work in progress, but if you want to customize a text editor to do your bidding, Brackets is a good place to start.

• Free - Download now

TextMate 2

TextMate won the hearts and minds of app and web developers for having feature like nested scopes, folding code sections, project management, regex-based search and replace and more. The app's developer, Allan Odgaard, had long promised a 2.0 release but never delivered, then late in 2011 he made available a public build.

Then in 2012 something amazing happened: Odgaard released TextMate 2 as open source. He said he had long wanted to, he said, but Apple's restrictions on how apps can work on the Mac App Store pushed him over the edge. So the Mac App Store's loss is your gain.

• Free - Download now

TextWrangler

Bare Bones Software's BBEdit is the 800 pound gorilla of Mac text editors, and no wonder - it's been around forever, it seems. TextWrangler is BBEdit's 'little brother,' based around the same core text editing technology and designed for anyone that needs a text editing and transformation tool.

BBEdit offers much more extensive web authoring and software development tools, but that's not to say that TextWrangler skimps on features: you get grep-style search and replace, AppleScript support, authenticated saves, extensive FTP/SFTP support and much more.

• Free Download now

Here are three exceptional text editors that will cost you a little bit, but provide absolutely amazing capabilities depending on your needs.

BBEdit 10

Bare Bones Software's business has been built on the enduring success of BBEdit - its flagship text editor has been around for 22 years and is still going strong. BBEdit was originally designed as a programmer's utility for writing code, but has been modified in the intervening years to become an excellent web page editing tool as well.

The software features syntax highlighting for dozens of different languages, it's scriptable and recordable using AppleScript, features Perl-compatible regex support, sports built-in debugging tools, FTP and SFTP support, supports version control using CVS, Perforce and Subversion and has hundreds of more features besides. It is, quite frankly, overkill for many users, but for those of us who need it, it's indispensible.

• $49.99 - Download now

Coda 2

Most of the other text editors on this list are general purpose tools that can be used by someone developing an application or writing source just as much as someone working on a web site. Panic's Coda 2 is a horse of a different color: it's specifically designed to act as a text editor for web developers and designers.

Download Why Coda Is The Best Text Editor For Macbook Pro

Coda started out a simplified way to write web code and get it to where it needed to go - it combined editing, FTP client, a web preview engine and, if need be, command line terminal access. Panic's moved Coda way beyond that with the new release - the editor adds features like code folding, the UI has been reworked, source code can be managed with either Git or SVN, a new MySQL editor is available, and much more - more than 100 new features in all. Coda 2 has a gorgeous, easy to use interface that makes your web page writing and tuning a breeze. It also works marvelously with Panic's companion iPad app, cheekily named Diet Coda.

• $74.99 - Download now

Sublime Text 2

Sublime Text 2 is billed as 'a sophisticated text editor for code, markup and prose,' making it the only one on this list that recognizes plain old wordsmiths as worth of love from the text editing crowd too. It has an attractive user interface and neat features like the ability to make multiple selections and changes at the same time. I have to admit, when I began researching this topic, I'd never heard of Sublime Text 2, but after reading some forceful comments promoting it, I looked it up - it's pretty slick.

Textpad

I especially like Sublime Text 2's 'distraction free mode,' a full screen mode that focuses on just your text on the screen and nothing else. Other cool features include split editing, a hideable command palette, and a very fair cross-platform per-user license that lets you pay for it once but use it on as many computers as you like, whether they be Mac, Windows or Linux. While you are required to pay for it, you can download and use it to test it out without penalty.

A new 3.0 version is currently in development, with boatloads more features.

What Is The Best Text Editor For Mac

• $70 - Download now

This isn't meant to be a comprehensive list of text editors for the Mac, just a few of my favorites that I think are worth your attention. I imagine you have other ones that I may have missed, so please tell me about them in the comments.

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