CotEditor

Overview

CotEditor is a plain text editor designed exclusively for macOS. It is a free, lightweight, minimalist yet powerful application that aims to deliver a native, smooth text editing experience for macOS users.

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Core Features & Advantages

👍 Designed for macOS
CotEditor fully adheres to macOS design standards and application behavior guidelines. Whether in appearance or user experience, it seamlessly integrates into the macOS ecosystem, offering a fluid, native-app feel.

🚀 Instant Launch
Starts up extremely fast—so you can begin writing immediately without delay, keeping your creativity and workflow uninterrupted.

📖 Fully Open Source
CotEditor is an open-source project with its source code hosted on GitHub. This means it’s transparent, trustworthy, and welcomes contributions from developers and users worldwide—whether through code, bug reports, or feature suggestions.

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Key Functional Features

1. Syntax Highlighting

• Includes syntax highlighting for over 50 popular programming and markup languages, such as HTML, PHP, Python, Ruby, and Markdown.
• Supports custom syntax definitions for personalized needs.

2. Powerful Find & Replace

• Powered by the ICU regex engine, enabling advanced text search and replacement capabilities to meet complex text processing needs.

3. Settings with One Click

• No complex configuration files or technical expertise required. All settings—including syntax definitions and themes—are easily accessible and adjustable via the standard Preferences window.

4. Auto Backup

• Say goodbye to losing unsaved work. CotEditor automatically backs up documents during editing, ensuring your work remains safe.

5. Outline Menu

• Extracts specific lines (e.g., headings) based on predefined syntax rules to generate an outline. You can quickly jump to the corresponding lines, making navigation in long documents effortless.

6. Split View

• Supports splitting the editor window into multiple panes, allowing you to view and edit different parts of the same document simultaneously.

7. Character Inspector

• Displays Unicode character data for selected characters in a pop-up window, providing clear and detailed information.

8. Scripting Support

• Highly scriptable. Create your own macros using your preferred languages (e.g., Python, Ruby, Perl, PHP, UNIX shell, AppleScript, JavaScript) to automate tasks.

9. Incompatible Character Checker

• Automatically detects and lists characters that cannot be converted to the target encoding, extremely useful when handling multi-encoding files.

10. CJK Language Friendly

• Accurately detects various file encodings to minimize garbled text.
• Supports vertical text mode (top-to-bottom, right-to-left).
• Preserves proper line heights for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, ensuring clean and beautiful typesetting.

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Conclusion

CotEditor strikes a perfect balance between lightweight speed and powerful functionality. It delivers fluent, convenient everyday text editing while offering advanced features like syntax highlighting, robust regex search/replace, and scripting extensions—making it an excellent tool for developers, writers, and power users. Its open-source nature and deep integration with macOS make it a trustworthy and reliable text editor choice for Mac users.

Feedback Welcome! 💖
If you encounter any bugs or have feature suggestions, feel free to report them in our Issue Tracker.