The following is a list of notable text editors.
Graphical and text user interface
The editors below can be used with either a graphical user interface or a text-based user interface.
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{| class="wikitable sortable"
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! Name
! Description
! License
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| Elvis
| A vi/ex clone with additional commands and features.
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| Extensible Versatile Editor (EVE)
| Default under OpenVMS.
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| GNU Emacs/XEmacs
| Two long-existing forks of the popular Emacs programmer's editor. Emacs and vi are the dominant text editors on Unix-like operating systems, and have inspired the editor wars.
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| Language-Sensitive Editor (LSE)
| Programmer's Editor for OpenVMS implemented using TPU.
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| Textadept
| A modular, cross-platform editor written in C and Lua, using Scintilla.
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| vile (vi like Emacs)
| A vi work-alike which retains the vi command-set while adding new features: multiple windows and buffers, infinite undo, colorization, scriptable expansion capabilities, etc.
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| vim
| A clone based on the ideas of the vi editor and designed for use both from a command line interface and in a graphical user interface.
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|}
Graphical user interface
<!--Please don't add word processors like WordPad and TextEdit, thanks! / See discussion-->
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{| class="wikitable sortable"
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! Name
! Description
! License
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| Acme
| A User Interface for Programmers by Rob Pike.
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| Alphatk
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| Apache OpenOffice Writer
| Word processor and text editor of the Apache OpenOffice Suite, based on StarOffice's suite.
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| Arachnophilia
|A source code editor which is successor to another HTML editor, WebThing.
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| Atom
| A modular, general-purpose editor built using HTML, CSS and JavaScript on top of Chromium and Node.js. The project was retired in late 2022 with the repo archived on December 15, 2022.
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| BBEdit
|A proprietary text editor originally developed for Macintosh System Software 6
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| Bluefish
| A source code editor with web development features.
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| Brackets
| A modular, web-oriented editor built using HTML, CSS and JavaScript on top of the Chromium Embedded Framework.
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| CodeWright
|An editing system or source code editor which can be configured to work with other integrated development environment (IDE) systems.
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| Crimson Editor
|A text editor which is typically used as a source code editor and HTML editor.
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| CygnusEd (CED)
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| E Text Editor
| Default under IBM OS/2 versions 2-4.
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| Eddie
| An editor originally made for BeOS and later ported to Linux and macOS.
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| EmEditor
|extensible commercial text editor which supports Unicode, syntax highlighting and vertical selection editing, editing of large files (up to 248 GB or 2.1 billion lines)
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| Epsilon
|A programmer's text editor modelled after Emacs.
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| FeatherPad
| A lightweight editor based on Qt.
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| Geany
| A fast and lightweight editor – IDE, uses GTK+.
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| gedit
| Former default under GNOME until GNOME 42.
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| GNOME Text Editor
| Default under GNOME from GNOME 42 onwards
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| GoldED (text editor of Cubic IDE)
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| HxD
| An editor for huge files, working with both binary data and texts.
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| iA Writer
| A multi-platform Markdown text editor with writing focused feature set
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| jEdit
| A free cross-platform programmer's editor written in Java, GPL licensed.
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| JOVE
| Jonathan's Own Version of Emacs
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| Kate
| A basic text editor for the KDE desktop.
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| Kedit
| An editor with commands and Rexx macros similar to IBM XEDIT.
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| Kile
| A user friendly TeX/LaTeX editor.
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| Komodo Edit
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| KWrite
| A default editor on KDE.
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| Lapis
| An experimental text editor allowing multiple simultaneous edits of text in a multiple selection from a few examples provided by the user.
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| Leafpad
| Default under LXDE.
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| Leo
| A text editor that features outlines with clones as its central tool of organization and navigation.
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| LibreOffice Writer
| Word processor and text editor of the LibreOffice Suite, based on StarOffice's suite.
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| Light Table
| A text editor and IDE with real-time, inline expression evaluation. Intended mainly for dynamic languages such as Clojure, Python and JavaScript, and for web development.
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| mcedit
| A text editor provided with Midnight Commander.
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| Metapad
| Windows Notepad replacement, GPL licensed.
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| MicroEMACS
| JASSPA MicroEMACS
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| Mousepad
| The default under Xfce.
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| Multi-Edit
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| NEdit – "Nirvana Editor"
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| Notepad
| Default under Microsoft Windows.
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| Notepad++
| A tabbed text editor.
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| Pe
| A text editor for BeOS.
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| pluma
| The default text editor of the MATE desktop environment for Linux.
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| PolyEdit
| Proprietary word processor and text editor.
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| Programmer's File Editor (PFE)
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| PSPad
| An editor for Microsoft Windows with various programming environments.
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| RJ TextEd
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| Sam
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| SciTE
| Cross-platform, multi-user, multi-codepage, multi-language syntax highlighting, area selector, RE find/replace, and very customisable, allowing different font configurations for each syntactic group, user-defined menus and abbreviation expansion.
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| SimpleText
| Default under Classic Mac OS from version 7.5.
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| SlickEdit
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| Smultron
| A macOS text editor.
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| SubEthaEdit<br/>(formerly named Hydra)
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| Sublime Text
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| TeachText
| Default under Classic Mac OS versions prior to 7.5.
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| TED Notepad
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| Tex-Edit Plus
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| TextPad
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| TeXnicCenter
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| TeXShop
| TeX/LaTeX editor and previewer.
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| TextEdit
| Default under macOS, NeXTSTEP, and GNUstep.
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| TextMate
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| TextWrangler
| Mac-only editor by Bare Bones Software, sunsetted. Final version released 09/20/2016, replaced by free tier of [BBEdit].
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| The Hessling Editor
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| The SemWare Editor (TSE)<br/>(formerly named QEdit).
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| UltraEdit
| Text and source code editor with syntax highlighting, code folding, FTP, etc., handles multi-gigabyte files.
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| Ulysses
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| VEDIT
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| Visual Studio Code
| An extensible code editor with support for development operations like debugging, task running and version control.
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| WinEdt
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| X11 Xedit
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| XEDIT
| Default under VM/CMS.
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| Yudit
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|Xed
| Default under Linux Mint, forked from Pluma.
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|Zed
| Started by former Atom developer Nathan Sobo. Positioned as the "spiritual successor" to Atom.
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|}
Text user interface
System default
<!-- E in OS/2 versions 2-4 is a GUI program. TEDIT is the text mode editor. -->
{| class="wikitable sortable"
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! Name
! Description
! License
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| E
| is the text editor in PC DOS 6, PC DOS 7 and PC DOS 2000.
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| ed
| The default line editor on Unix since its birth. Either ed or a compatible editor is available on all systems labeled as Unix (not by default on every one).
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| ED
| The default editor on CP/M, MP/M, Concurrent CP/M, CP/M-86, MP/M-86, Concurrent CP/M-86.
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| EDIT
| The default on MS-DOS 5.0 and higher and is included with all 32-bit versions of Windows that do not rely on a separate copy of DOS. Up to including MS-DOS 6.22, it only supported files up to 64 KB.
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| EDIT
| The text editor in Novell DOS 7, OpenDOS 7.01, DR-DOS 7.02 and higher. Supports large files for as long as swap space is available. Version 7 and higher optionally supports a pseudo-graphics user interface named NewUI.
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| EDIX
| The text editor in Concurrent DOS, Concurrent DOS XM, Concurrent PC DOS, Concurrent DOS 386, FlexOS 286, FlexOS 386, 4680 OS, 4690 OS, S5-DOS/MT.
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| EDITOR
| The text editor in DR DOS 3.31 through DR DOS 6.0, and the predecessor of EDIT.
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| EDLIN
| A command-line based line editor introduced with 86-DOS, and the default on MS-DOS prior to version 5 and is also available on MS-DOS 5.0 and Windows NT.
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| nvi
| (Installed as vi by default in BSD operating systems and some Linux distributions) – A free replacement for the original vi which maintains compatibility while adding some new features.
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| vi
| The default for Unix systems and must be included in all POSIX compliant systems – One of the earliest screen-based editors, it is based on ex.
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|}
Others
{| class="wikitable sortable"
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! Name
! Description
! License
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| ECCE
| ECCE (The Edinburgh Compatible Context Editor) is a text editor designed by Dr Hamish Dewar at Edinburgh University.
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| Emacs
| A screen-based editor with an embedded computer language, Emacs Lisp. Early versions were implemented in TECO, see below.
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| JED
| Multi-mode, multi-window editor with drop-down menus, folding, ctags support, undo, UTF-8, key-macros, autosave, etc. Multi-emulation; default is emacs. Programmable in S-Lang.
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| JOE
| A modern screen-based editor with a sort of enhanced-WordStar style to the interface, but can also emulate Pico.
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| LE
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| mcedit
| Full featured terminal text editor for Unix-like systems.
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| mg
| Small and light, uses GNU/Emacs keybindings. Installed by default on OpenBSD.
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| MinEd
| Text editor with user-friendly interface, mouse and menu control, and extensive Unicode and CJK support; for Unix/Linux and Windows/DOS.
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| GNU nano
| A clone of Pico GPL licensed.
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| ne
| A minimal, modern replacement for vi.
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| Pico
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| SETEDIT
| A clone of the editor of Borland's Turbo* IDEs.
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| The SemWare Editor
| (TSE for DOS)<br />(formerly called QEdit)
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vi-like
The following text editors provide functionality similar to vi.
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| Neovim
| A fork of vim with added Lua scripting and native LSP integration.
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| BusyBox
| In addition to many other utilities, includes a vi clone except for reduced functionality to minimize size.
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| nvi
| A new implementation and currently the standard vi in BSD distributions.
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Command line interface
The following entries are utilities that provide no interactive user interface, only a command-line interface. They are arguably not text editors.
{| class="wikitable"
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! Name
! Description
! License
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| sed
| A stream editor based on the scripting features in ed. A utility that parses and transforms text, using a simple, compact programming language.
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Library
The following entires are packages that support editing text, not text editors per se.
{| class="wikitable"
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! Name
! Description
! License
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| Cocoa text system
| Supports text components of macOS.
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| Scintilla
| Used as the core of several text editors.
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| Text Processing Utility
| Language and runtime package, developed by DEC, used to implement the Language-Sensitive Editor and Extensible Versatile Editor, Eve.
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|}
ASCII and ANSI art
These editors are specifically designed for the creation of ASCII and ANSI text art.
- ACiDDraw – designed for editing ASCII text art. Supports ANSI color (ANSI X3.64)
- TheDraw – ANSI/ASCII text editor for DOS and PCBoard file format support
ASCII font editors
- FIGlet – for creating ASCII art text
- TheDraw – DOS ANSI/ASCII text editor with built-in editor and manager of ASCII fonts
Historical
Visual and full-screen editors
Line editors
See also
- Comparison of text editors
- Editor war
- Line editor
- List of HTML editors
- List of integrated development environments
- List of word processors
- Outliner, a specialized type of word processor
- Source code editor