BBEdit — The Complete Guide: A Veteran Mac Editor, and What Free Mode Includes
BBEdit, from Bare Bones Software, is one of the longest-standing text editors on the Mac. It excels at find and replace, working with large files and text processing, and suits cleaning data files, logs and scripts. It is macOS only.
BBEdit
Bare Bones Software
A long-standing professional Mac text editor; after 30 days it switches to a permanent free mode with no nag screens and a subset of features.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- Grep search — regex find and replace across entire folders.
- Large files — open and edit long logs and data files.
- Syntax highlighting — for programming languages and common formats.
- Live preview — HTML and Markdown as you write.
- Archives and rescue — edit files inside Zip archives and recover unsaved documents.
What is free and what is not
For the first 30 days all features are unlocked. After that BBEdit does not stop: it switches to a permanent free mode, with no nag screens, keeping basic editing and search. That mode lacks Git, LSP, projects, Text Factories, Clippings and shell worksheets, which you unlock with a paid licence or subscription. The vendor’s site does not explicitly address commercial use in free mode, so for company work check with the vendor.
Related tools
For a fully free open-source Mac editor — CotEditor. For a code editor with free Git and LSP — Visual Studio Code. For a fast open-source editor — Zed.
CotEditor
CotEditor project (1024jp)
A simple native Mac text editor — syntax highlighting for 60+ languages, regex, split view and a character inspector.
Get it from the vendor
Visual Studio Code
Microsoft
Free code editor with a huge extension library, built-in terminal, Git and debugger — for Python, scripts, CSV, LaTeX and more.
Get it from the vendor
Zed
Zed Industries
Very fast open-source code editor with built-in LSP, real-time collaborative editing and optional AI.
Get it from the vendor
Vim
Vim project (Bram Moolenaar, now maintained by Christian Brabandt and contributors)
The classic modal text editor installed on almost every Unix system — fast, light and suited to terminal and server work.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
Even in free mode BBEdit is a strong Mac text editor, especially for find and replace. If you need Git and projects, other editors give you those for free.