Code Editors for MAC
10 free Mac apps in Code Editors, including LiteEdit, Cate, and Geany. Each app page lists its version, size, macOS requirement and what’s new, and the download button leads to the developer’s official source.
10 apps
LiteEditLiteEdit is a native Mac code editor under 1 MB, built with Swift and AppKit, for opening, reading and quickly editing code alongside your main IDE. It has syntax highlighting for more than 20 languages, tabs, a sidebar file tree, Find & Replace with regex and a Quick Open command for switching files. When you relaunch it, it brings back your folder, files, cursor positions and window state.Developer Tools
CateCate is an IDE built on an infinite zoomable canvas, made for running several coding agents at once. Terminals, editors and browser panels float in a workspace instead of sitting in tabs. Run Claude Code, Codex or another agent CLI in a Cate terminal and each panel shows whether its agent is working, finished or waiting on you, with a notification the moment one needs input.Developer Tools
GeanyGeany is a small, fast integrated development environment built on the GTK toolkit. It was designed to depend on few other packages, while still giving programmers the tools they expect from an IDE: syntax highlighting, code folding, auto-completion, symbol lists and a way to build and run code from inside the editor. It handles many file types, including C, Java, PHP, HTML, Python, Perl and Pascal.Developer Tools
CodeEditCodeEdit is a code editor built by its community and written entirely for macOS in Swift, without Electron or other cross-platform frameworks. It aims to feel as light as TextEdit for quick edits while growing into a richer, Xcode-like experience for larger projects. Its features include syntax highlighting, code completion, project-wide find and replace, snippets, a built-in terminal, task running and Git integration. CodeEdit is not meant to replace Xcode; it is for projects that are not made for Apple platforms.Developer Tools
VimRVimR is a Neovim GUI for macOS, written in Swift. It runs Neovim inside and adds convenient features found in other graphical editors, so you keep Neovim's speed and keyboard-driven editing in a native Mac window. You get a Markdown preview, a general HTML preview that keeps your scroll position when it reloads, a fuzzy file finder like Xcode's Open Quickly, and a simple file browser.Developer Tools
Nextpad++Nextpad++ brings the Notepad++ code editor from Windows to the Mac as a fully native app. It is a port of the original Notepad++ code, not a rewrite and not Wine, so it works the way Notepad++ users expect, while fitting into macOS with native menus, shortcuts, file dialogs, dark mode and the macOS Tahoe look. You get syntax highlighting for many languages, plugins, macros, find-in-files with regular expressions, split view and the document map.Developer Tools
MacVimMacVim is the Mac version of Vim, the powerful, keyboard-driven text editor. It gives Vim a smooth native interface with menus, dialog boxes, toolbars and scroll bars, while keeping everything that makes Vim fast to use. You can use native or non-native full-screen modes, map trackpad gestures, the Touch Bar and Command-key shortcuts to Vim actions, and work in Vim tabs with your own colours.Developer Tools
CotEditorCotEditor is a lightweight plain-text editor made just for macOS. It looks and behaves the way a Mac app should, and it launches so quickly that you can start writing the moment you need to. It is equally good for notes, code and plain text files: syntax highlighting covers more than 60 languages, such as HTML, PHP, Python, Ruby and Markdown, and a powerful find and replace uses regular expressions. Every setting, including syntax definitions and themes, lives in a normal settings window, with no configuration files to edit.Developer Tools
ZedZed is a minimal, very fast code editor for Mac, written from scratch in Rust by the team that created Atom and Tree-sitter. It uses all of your CPU cores and draws its interface on the GPU with Metal, so opening big projects, searching and typing stay smooth. Zed supports most programming languages through Tree-sitter and language servers, and adds AI agents, live collaboration with teammates, Git tools and a built-in terminal.Developer Tools
BBEditBBEdit is a professional text, code and HTML editor for Mac, made by Bare Bones Software for writers, web authors and software developers. It handles very large files, searches and replaces across many files with grep patterns, organizes work in projects and colors code in many languages. BBEdit has been around for over 30 years and is known for its slogan, "It doesn't suck."Developer Tools