CotEditor — The Complete Guide: A Free, Native Text Editor for the Mac
CotEditor is a text editor built specifically for macOS that behaves like a native Mac app: it opens quickly, fits the system interface and does not load the computer. It is open source under the Apache licence and available free on the Mac App Store and the official GitHub page.
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 vendorWhat you get
- Syntax highlighting — for more than 60 languages and formats.
- Regex — find and replace to clean up data files.
- Character inspector — spot hidden characters or ones that do not fit the encoding.
- Split view and outline menu — easy movement through a long file.
- Scripting and automatic backup — automate repeated actions and guard against loss.
Who it suits
People who work on a Mac and need to edit CSV, config files, scripts or Markdown quickly without opening a development environment. It has no debugger, LSP or terminal. The current version requires a recent macOS release, so on an older computer check the system requirements before downloading.
Related tools
For a long-standing Mac editor with strong folder search — BBEdit. For a fast code editor — Zed. For a full editor with extensions — Visual Studio Code.
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 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
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.
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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
CotEditor is the simple editor the Mac is missing: completely free, clean and fast.