When it comes to tools to edit texts and codes, Notepad++ is the first and foremost choice for Windows users. Yes, this tool is perfect for taking quick notes, ideas while you can also share them with others. Moreover, it also assists automatic completion of the notes, supports multiple languages and one can format anything using its advanced features.
Sep 24, 2014 Notepad for Mac is also a great free text editor to use when you want to code. The way that notepad for mac allows context highlighting available makes coding relatively simple on the program. You can also use Notepad for Windows and not just notepad mac os x systems which makes it a great overall software for all computer owners.
Best Notepad++ Alternatives
But it’s only available on Windows and covering some drawbacks, we have some alternatives to Notepad++ that you may want to consider.
Notepad is most used, expanded open source online text editor for MS Windows user and everyone searching for it but most of the people still searching for the Notepad Mac, So, If you are one of them who attracted from Notepad and using only Mac, there are alternatives available so that you can use the Notepad text editor in your Notepad Mac. Due to its extensive features, free price and support for 84 languages, Notepad for mac was voted as the most used text editor worldwide with 34.7 percent of 26,086 respondents on Stack Overflow claiming to use it daily.
Notepad is very tightly integrated with Win32 API. The classic windows look and feel is big part of its appeal (at least for me). To port the same logic to a different GUI API (Linux GTK/QT/other or Mac whatever) probably at least 50% of the code will need to be rewritten. Notepad for Mac is a note-taking app for Mac OS X. A trial version is available from several download sites, while the full licensed version of Notepad for Mac will cost you $20.
1. Sublime Text
This powerful Notepad++ alternative has a slick user interface with amazing interface; most importantly, it can be used without a stuck time limit once you purchase the license. The feature ‘Goto Anything’ lets you open any file with quick keystrokes.
Multiple selections allow making changes very interactively, that too multiple at a time. You can even edit two locations in one file using a split editing feature. Alternative to Notepad++, just customize anything as per file or project type.
Supporting Platforms: Windows, Mac, and Linux
Download: Sublime Text!
2. Atom
Notepad++ alternative for Mac users is right here! Atom is one such text or editor, which makes code collaboration simple and easy. What makes it cool is cross-platform editing, smart autocompletion of the codes, and splitting into the panes. All of them can help in finishing codes fastest.
This Notepad++ alternative allows easy browsing and opening of a file within. Where you can install more themes apart from changing the pre-installed, it’s easy to customize the whole style of the user interface.
Supporting Platforms: Windows, Mac, and Linux
Download: Atom
3. GNU Emacs
It is a customizable text editor that includes syntax coloring and various other content-aware editing modes. Full Unicode supports all human scripts and contains complete in-built documentation along with tutorials for all the new users.
You can download and install extensions based on the functionality. Now you would want to download this Notepad++ alternative.
Supporting Platforms: Windows, Mac, and Linux
Download: Emacs
4. Vim
Another text editor that is an alternative to Notepad++ for Windows, Vim, is developing continuously for development. There is an extensive plugin system that can even integrate with various other tools. The user-friendly application also has a visual mode to highlight the necessary texts.
Where Vim also contains powerful search and replace mode with macro recording, you have got your solution to Notepad++ alternative.
Supporting Platforms: Windows, Mac, and Linux
Download: Vim
5. Visual Studio Code
The modern code editor has refined the whole concept for smart completions based on function definitions and imported modules. Visual Studio Code allows debugging of the code right from here. You can launch or attach it to the running app while debugging with call stacks and console.
You can install extensions to add new languages, themes, and debuggers while connecting yourself to additional services. Perfect for Notepad++ alternatives for all platforms.
Supporting Platforms: Windows, Mac, and Linux
Download: Visual Studio Code
6. Geany
Powerful, stable and lightweight; this is how Geany is known for its text editing capacity as a Notepad++ alternative. It is available in more than 40 languages even after which 50 programming languages are supported at the back.
Themes and colors are customizable, and various other settings let you adjust the needs. Its powerful plugin system can bring new features apart from already embedded ones. Surely will make you forget Notepad++ as a perfect alternative to the same.
Supporting Platforms: Windows, Mac, and Linux
Download: Geany
7. Brackets
An intelligent text editor that understands your web design too calls Brackets in the list by itself. Moreover, the lightweight and powerful editor is capable of blending visual tools here so you can enjoy writing the codes.
No need to jump between file tabs as you can open the window into the code using Inline editor. It can also work with preprocessors in a whole new manner like Live Highlight with LESS and SCSS files. Choose this Notepad++ alternative for windows and Mac now.
Supporting Platforms: Windows, Mac, and Linux
Download: Brackets
8. TextMate
Designed as Notepad++ alternative for Mac, TextMate allows you to make multiple changes in one single time. Plus, you get to enjoy bundles of customization which also supports different languages, markup system, and workflow.
Common texts can be kept as snippets and later to be adapted in any content as required.
Supporting Platforms: Mac
Download: TextMate
9. LightTable
Calling itself as a next-generation code editor, it gives you real-time insights of data values that flow through the code. If you get any new idea, try it then and there. Plus you can also ask questions to understand the code.
You can embed anything here, be it graphics or games to the running visualizations. Whatever you want to fill in seamlessly, it can be done in a snap. Now eval or debugging, finder or commands, you have got them all.
Supporting Platforms: Windows, Mac, and Linux
Download: Light Table
10. Bluefish
This Notepad++ alternative for Mac and Windows is developed especially for programmers and web developers. They can write their website, script or programming code and try and finalize. This open-source development project is moreover, lightweight, has multiple document interface and open files swiftly through filename patterns.
Plus, do some full-screen editing, character map of Unicode characters and specify snippet sidebars, just the way you like.
Supporting Platforms: Windows, Mac, and Linux
Download: Bluefish
And these are the list of not only some of the best text editors but also Notepad++ alternatives. Not only for Windows, but most of these alternatives to Notepad++ also support Mac and Linux as well. Download the ones you like and simply enjoy the editing.
Responses
Have you recently switched from Windows to Mac? And now you are looking ahead to download Notepad++ For MAC?
Well if your answer is yes, then you better stick with this page. There is no doubt that Notepad++ is one of the most popular code editors that available for the Windows computers.
It has a huge, and there are users who do not want to use anything else in a replacement of Notepad++. Notpad++ has a simple user interface as well as it has the ability to edit the different type of codes.
However when it comes to Notepad++ For MAC, well there is no such support. Since Notepad++ required the Win32 API hence, you cannot install it on your Mac computer.
However, that does not mean, you cannot run Notepad++ on your Mac computer. Of course, you can, there are two possible ways to do so. One of them is to rewrite the source code of Notepad++ and make it compatible with the Mac environment. Or you can use some Emulators.
But going with the first option is not a great idea, to be honest. It is a lengthy process, and the result is unpredictable. Talking about the emulator, well in order to run Notepad++ on your Mac here are the steps that you can follow:
How to install Notepad++ For MAC using an Emulator
For this tutorial, we are going to use this tool called Wine. Now, what this tool actually does?
Well in simple words, you can say that Wine is a free and open-source application. It offers a compatibility layer for the Unix based operating systems. Hence, as a result, it can easily run programs developed for Microsoft Windows on the Unix Based operating systems.
Also as you already aware of the fact that Mac OS is also based on Unix. So you can use wine to run Notepad++ on Mac. Anyway now let’s just go ahead and talk about the steps:
- First of all, you need to download the stable installer for Wine. You can do so by going to the official website of Wine.
- Once downloaded, double click on the installer to install the application.
- Now you have to create a fake C: drive where your Windows applications will be stored. Simply enter the “winecfg” code into the terminal.
- Once you are done with the installation. Go back to the internet and download the Notepad++ text editor from its official website.
- After that you have to place the file to any directory according to your choice.
- Now you have to open the terminal and navigate to that directory where you have kept the Notepad++.
- In the end end you have to type the wine the-name-of-the-file.exe command. Replace the “name-of-the-file.exe” line with the Notepad++ app name.
- That is it, now Wine will launch the Notepad++ application for you.
However, as you can see that this is quite a lengthy process and not a suitable way to take in most of the cases. Hence we would advise you to try out some of the Notepad++ Alternatives for Mac.
There are lots of alternatives to Notepad++ For MAC available on the internet. So let’s just go ahead and have a look at those alternatives:
Top Alternatives For Notepad++ For MAC
Atom
Atom is one of the popular text editors for Mac and other platforms. It is an open source text editor that provided by the Github team. Plus since the text editor is open sources, so you do not have to pay for it.
The Best part of the Atom is that you can customize the text editor itself. This means you can make Atom work for you the way you want. However, for that, you need to have knowledge of HTML and JavaScript.
It also comes with some of the cool themes and offers a hell lot of features. Such as Modal control, project management, Github conflict management, and so on.
Brackets
Brackets is another popular text editor available for the Mac that you can try out. This text editor was developed by popular software development company Adobe.
Brackets are free to use text editor, and it comes with lots of amazing features. Such as it has instant search, CSS Hints, JS Hint Support plus it comes with a lot of themes. Also, it is easy to integrate with the Git tool.
Adobe Text Editor also comes with some of the unique features. These include, extract, colors, fonts from a PSD file and converts it into a clean CSS file. So you can save a lot of time.
Visual Studio Code
If you really want to get Windows environment on your Mac. Then you can install Visual Studio Code on your Mac computer. The Visual Studio Code supports Mac and Linux platform apart from the Windows. Plus it is available free of cost.
It is a perfect code editor for the web developers, although we cannot say how well it performs for other coding environments. However, as long as it comes to web development, it supports 30 major programming languages. Also with the Visual Studio Code, you will get real-time and automatic API description, linting, Git control debugging and comes with the support for regex.
Sublime Text
Sublime Text is also one of the popular text editors that comes with a simple design. However, it is not free and holds a price tag. Although, it seems like a basic notepad tool, however it is not.
Sublime Text is extremely fast and powerful. Also, the best part of the code editor is that it is keyboard centric. As a result, you can perform most of the tasks using a bunch of keystrokes.
In addition to that Sublime text looks exactly the same on all the platforms. Since it is developed on some custom cross-platform UI framework.
UltraEdit
UltraEdit claims that it is the world’s best text editor. Although we are not sure if it is the number one text editor or not. But it is defiantly one of the best ones.
The best part of this text editor is that it supports a bunch of programming languages. This includes C, Objective C, Javascript, XML, PHP, Perl, Python and so on.
Also, it comes with a bunch of features that highlights the code, comes with disk based text editing and has lots of themes. However, this tool is not free and comes with a price tag.
Textastic
Textastic is another popular text editor that comes with a cheap price tag. The text editor is specially developed for the Mac computers.
The best part of the application is that it supports more than 80 source code and markup languages. Plus it comes with auto-completion support for HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, C, and Objective-C.
Notepad Plus Plus Mac Os
The text editor is also super fast and supports the iCloud sync features. This makes sure that your work is getting synced across multiple Apple devices.
Also, the tool costs less than $10, so in case if you are looking for some paid tools. Then you better check this one out.
Komodo Edit
Komodo Edit is one of the popular text editors around the developers. Even it is the best alternative to the Notepad++ for Mac. Komodo edit comes with an Integrated development environment (IDE).
The Komodo Edit also comes with lots of features such as autocomplete, markdown viewing, multi-language support, change tracking and so on.
Also, you will find lots of GitHub repositories and are available for this text editor. However, it does not offer a bunch of features when compared to the other tools. But as far as your requirement is to get done with basic jobs. The text editor will do the job for you.
TextWrangler
TextWrangler looks kind of as same as the Notepad++. Plus it is one of the top alternatives to the Notepad++ for Mac.
The text editor comes with some of the basic features that include Multi-file search, Unicode viewing, spellcheck, built-in text transformations and a few others. In other words, you can say that it is a free alternative to the BBEdit.
Overall it is a pretty basic text editor and does not come with many features.
TextMate
TextMate is a powerful, simple and lightweight text editor that is available for the Mac users. The text editor supports a wide range of languages and syntax, tabs and so on. Also, it comes with a bunch of features.
Like it comes with the support for Auto-Indent for Common Actions Like Pasting Text, Auto-Pairing of Brackets and Other Characters, Completion of Words from Current Document and so on.
BBEdit
Notepad Plus Plus For Windows
In the end, we have this tool called BBEdit it is a paid text editor that you can try out. The text editor does not come with a great user interface. However, it is one of the powerful text editors.
It is a perfect text editor for HTML and text editing and comes with the remote editing via FTP/SFTP support.
So those were a couple of best alternatives to Notepad++ for MacOS. Now go ahead and have a look at them. Also if you have any questions, do feel free to comment below.
Notepad Plus Plus
Read More: