BBEdit for Mac

BBEdit for Mac is the leading professional HTML and text editor for the Macintosh.

Specifically crafted in response to the needs of Web authors and software developers, this award-winning product provides an abundance of high-performance features for editing, searching, and manipulation of text.

An intelligent interface provides easy access to BBEdit’s best-of-class features, including grep pattern matching, search and replace across multiple files, project definition tools, function navigation and syntax coloring for numerous source code languages, code folding, FTP and SFTP open and save, AppleScript, macOS Unix scripting support, text and code completion, and of course a complete set of robust HTML markup tools.

Features and Highlights

Text Factories
Text Factories increase your productivity by making it possible to quickly and easily apply as many of BBEdit’s powerful arsenal of tools as you need to achieve your goals across multiple files and folders, with just the single initial setup required. As a bonus, text factories operate in the background, allowing you to use the app for other work while they’re running, and take full advantage of machines with multiple processors.

Codeless Language Modules
Codeless language modules make it much easier to extend BBEdit’s built-in syntax coloring and function navigation. The basic syntax and coloring rules for programming languages can be represented by a relatively simple text file, without requiring programming or advanced logic.

Terminal Integration
Invoke BBEdit from the command line and pass the results to a document. For example, the ps (process status) command can generate some extremely long lines. Here, we are telling ps to give complete details and to put the result into a new document and to scroll the window to the top of the document. (The document behind the Terminal window is a BBEdit document.)

Organize your projects
You can also add files from anywhere (on disk, or from FTP/SFTP) to a BBEdit Project (and save the Project for reuse). While the Disk Browser and FTP/SFTP Browser windows show you the structure of your volumes, the app Projects let you easily access related files without them having to be located together.

Automator Support
BBEdit for macOS includes a set of Automator actions that mirrors its internal text transformations; most of what is on the Text menu is available to Automator, as well as a “Replace All” action for search and replace; and a few supporting actions to smooth the process of getting text into and out of open the tool documents. No scripting required!

Improved syntax coloring
The internal syntax coloring mechanics have been extensively reworked, allowing for a much greater selection of core color types, and now allowing language modules to add their own color types. Support for color schemes has been expanded, and several factory color schemes are included.

New Clippings system mechanics
The Clippings system (used for creating, managing, and applying frequently used "snippets" of text) is now even more powerful and flexible. Any clipping set can be made available universally or on a per-language basis (for any desired set of languages). The Clippings palette, text completion system, and the "Insert Clipping" command have been extended to support this additional flexibility.

New UI for Find Differences
The "Find Differences" dialog box has been modernized, and folder comparisons are faster than ever, thanks to a rewritten and newly performance-tuned comparison engine. The most significant changes are in the results interface, however: an all-new single window presentation is much easier to use for folder comparisons, is easier to manage, and (for folder comparisons) provides the ability to copy files as needed from one folder to another.

How to Use

• Install and launch BBEdit on your Mac
• Open or create a new text or code file
• Use syntax highlighting for supported languages
• Search and replace with advanced grep tools
• Use projects to organize multiple files
• Preview HTML files in the built-in browser
• Access scripts and automation via AppleScript
• Customize settings and preferences to your needs
• Save and export your work as needed

System Requirements

macOS 10.15.4 or later (Catalina and up)

Intel or Apple Silicon Mac

50MB of available disk space

Internet connection for updates

Administrator privileges for installation

PROS

• Fast performance with large files
• Powerful search and replace tools
• Supports many programming languages
• Highly customizable interface
• Reliable and stable for daily use

CONS

• No built-in terminal support
• Lacks Git integration features
• Interface may feel outdated
• Free version has feature limits
• No Windows or Linux version

Note: 30 days trial version.