An Application similar to NOTEPAD++ on Mac

[stanleystf]

I'm looking for an Application similar to NOTEPAD++ on Mac. Notepad ++ is very versatile and user-friendly text reader. It allows you to change the color of the background and also the font of the text. Performing searches on it is also easy.

What's a similar app on Mac that's free?

I should mention that I'm not a programmer and I want a text editor for reading massive text files and performing searches on them.

These are some of the apps suggested so far:

Atom https://atom.io/ (discontinued)
Aquamacs https://aquamacs.org
BBEdit https://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/
CotEditor https://coteditor.com
Geany https://www.geany.org
Kate https://kate-editor.org
MacVim https://macvim-dev.github.io/macvim
Notepad Next https://github.com/dail8859/NotepadNext
Smultron https://www.peterborgapps.com/smultron/
Sublime Text https://www.sublimetext.com
Tincta https://codingfriends.github.io/Tincta/
TextEdit https://support.apple.com/guide/textedit/welcome/mac
TextMate https://macromates.com
TextWrangler https://www.barebones.com/support/textwrangler/updates.html (discontinued)
UltraEdit https://www.ultraedit.com
Visual Studio Code https://code.visualstudio.com
Zed https://zed.dev

 

[Arctic Moose]

Try BBEdit, it has a free mode:

Bare Bones Software | BBEdit 14

 

[headlessmike]

There's sure to be countless opinions on this matter, but my preference is TextMate:

TextMate: Text editor for macOS

macromates.com

 

[bogdanw]

Notepad Next - "A cross-platform, reimplementation of Notepad++" https://github.com/dail8859/NotepadNext

 

[stanleystf]

I was just wondering why NOTEPAD++ is not released on Mac. Is there a particular reason?

 

[Diskutant]

Try Atom https://atom.io/

 

[PowerPCFan]

Atom is great, you can also use the built in app TextEdit (do Command + Space, then type TextEdit)

 

[galad]

Sublime Text (https://www.sublimetext.com), it will only nag to buy a license sometimes when saving a file.

 

[Boyd01]

I should mention that I'm not a programmer and I want a text editor for reading massive text files and performing searches on them.

I am also a big fan of Atom and use it for hours every day... writing code. I also like it for general text file editing. But it doesn't really sound like what the OP is looking for, I would not consider it "user friendly" and it's really oriented towards witing code.

Years ago I used an app called TextWrangler but (IIRC) it was a 32-bit app that I dumped when I switched to Catalina. Looks like it is now BBedit

Bare Bones Software | TextWrangler is now BBEdit -- and still free! It's time to switch.

Have never used BBedit, but you should probably check it out because I would say that TextWrangler was pretty similar to Notepad++

 

[CraigJDuffy]

I

I'm looking for an Application similar to NOTEPAD++ on Mac. Notepad ++ is very versatile and user-friendly text reader. It allows you to change the color of the background and also the font of the text. Performing searches on it is also easy.

What's a similar app on Mac that's free?

I should mention that I'm not a programmer and I want a text editor for reading massive text files and performing searches on them.

I like Atom

 

[aberamati]

Text Edit, built into MacOS

 

[singularity0993]

Try Atom https://atom.io/

Not Electron, please……

 

[dewalt]

A good replacement of it doesn't exist. I used it for a lot of log reviews, and couldnt find a decent alternative for mac. I even used N++ on parallels.

 

[Arctic Moose]

Have never used BBedit, but you should probably check it out because I would say that TextWrangler was pretty similar to Notepad++

BBEdit has been available to Mac users for over 30 years.

TextWrangler replaced BBEdit Lite, which was a cheaper version of BBEdit, in 2003.

TextWrangler was later made free, and then discontinued in 2017. It has now been folded back into BBEdit, where the free version serves the same market as TextWrangler did.

(I used BBEdit Lite, TextWrangler, and now BBEdit in free mode, and there’s really no difference between them for my use case, which admittedly utilizes only a tiny fraction of the available functionality.)

 

[MauiPa]

I was just wondering why NOTEPAD++ is not released on Mac. Is there a particular reason?

your question is best directed at the author, I might say he is not qualified to write Mac apps, he might say he sees no reason to, but you should ask him.

Author | Notepad++

notepad-plus-plus.org

 

[Tres]

Comedy “just use Vim or emacs in the terminal” option.

 

[Arctic Moose]

Comedy “just use Vim or emacs in the terminal” option.

ED(1)               Unix Programmer's Manual                ED(1)

NAME
     ed - text editor

SYNOPSIS
     ed [ - ] [ -x ] [ name ]
DESCRIPTION
     Ed is the standard text editor.

 

[tagsaid]

There's sure to be countless opinions on this matter, but my preference is TextMate:

TextMate: Text editor for macOS

macromates.com

Honestly, I live by this, it’s possibly the one app I truly use daily for work.

 

[wblb]

CotEditor is nice too:

‎CotEditor

‎CotEditor is a light-weight, neat, yet powerful text editor designed for editing plain-text files such as web pages (HTML, CSS), program source codes (Python, Ruby, Perl, etc.), structured texts (Markdown, Textile, TeX, etc.), or any other kind of plain-text. Just For Mac The application is...

apps.apple.com

 

[bogdanw]

A good replacement of it doesn't exist. I used it for a lot of log reviews, and couldnt find a decent alternative for mac. I even used N++ on parallels.

I haven’t tried recently, but you could probably still run Notepad++ on macOS with Wine (https://www.winehq.org) or easier with PlayOnMac https://www.playonmac.com/en/app-69-Notepad_Plus_Plus.html

 

[bukalemun]

There's sure to be countless opinions on this matter, but my preference is TextMate:

TextMate: Text editor for macOS

macromates.com

This. I use TextMate since its first version. It is the best option in my opinion.

 

[Danfango]

Visual Studio Code is pretty good. I use it for all text editing now. It's free and extensible:

Visual Studio Code - Code Editing. Redefined

Visual Studio Code is a code editor redefined and optimized for building and debugging modern web and cloud applications. Visual Studio Code is free and available on your favorite platform - Linux, macOS, and Windows.

code.visualstudio.com

You don't have to use all the programming stuff unless you need it. I am mostly maintaining a huge tree of files with text notes in that date back about 25 years

 

[headlessmike]

Honestly, I live by this, it’s possibly the one app I truly use daily for work.

This. I use TextMate since its first version. It is the best option in my opinion.

Me too! x2

 

[mox358]

Another vote for BBEdit here. I use it daily and it is indispensable. It’s a staple Mac app. The free mode should serve your uses, plus it is super powerful if you ever need more.

 

[tosbsas]

I need an editor that would show me hex color codes - the colors I need