Notepad++ is one of the most popular text editors for Windows. Its customizable GUI, syntax highlighting and syntax folding, multi-document and multi-view, and macro reading and playback features, make it one of the most versatile text editors for Windows. Notepad++ is so popular that it has an extremely passionate fanbase who refuses to use anything else other than Notepad++. That said, Notepad++ is not available for macOS. So, if you are switching from Windows to macOS, what do you use instead? Well, there are a ton of text editors on Mac which are on par and even better than Notepad++. So, if you are looking for one, here are 10 best alternatives to Notepad++ which you can use on macOS.

1. BBEdit 13

BBEdit is one of the oldest and most popular text-editors out there. The software has been available since 1992 which long predates the macOS as we know today. BBEdit’s existence for more than 25 years is enough to sing its praise. It’s one of the best HTML and text editor for macOS which anyone can use today. Along with simple text editing, the app also supports rich text editing and HTML.

  • BBEdit 13
  • Sublime Text
  • VSCode
  • Brackets
  • UltraEdit
  • Nova 3
  • Atom
  • Textastic
  • CodeRunner 4
  • MacVim Text Editor

Download: BBEdit 13 (Free, $49.99)

If you are looking for a replacement of Notepad++ for macOS, chances are you must have heard of Sublime Text. Sublime Text is one of the most respected text editors on Mac and brings a ton of features like syntax highlighting and folding, a high level of customizability, easy to navigate interface, multiple selections, powerful API and package ecosystem, and more. In fact, if not for its price, Sublime Text would have been our top pick for as the Notepad++ alternative.

Download: Sublime Text (Free, $80)

For a product which is created by Apple’s arch-rival Microsoft, you would think that it won’t be working well on macOS, if working at all. However surprisingly, Visual Studio Code is one of the best text-editors you can get on your Mac. It supports highlighting for more than 30 different languages, keyboard-centric and code-focused editing, lightning fast source code editor, Regex support, outlining, autocomplete with IntelliSense, automatic real-time API description, Git control and more.

4. Brackets

Brackets is a great free text-editor for your Mac which mainly focuses on web-design and hence a good option for front-end developers and web designers. Although Brackets has been designed by Adobe, it’s an open-source project which is supported by its active and passionate community. Probably the best feature of Brackets is Live Preview.

Download: Brackets (Free)

UltraEdit claims to be the world’s best text-editor and while I do not agree with its self-proclaimed title, it is one of the best text editors out there. One of the best things about UltraEdit is that the program supports a ton of different languages including and not limited to C, Objective C, Javascript, XML, PHP, Perl, and Python.

Download: UltraEdit ($79.95/year – comes with UltraCompare)

Nova 3 is a new native Mac code editor from Panic, the makers of the now-discontinued Coda 2. Unlike other cross-platform apps on this list, Nova 3 is built with macOS in mind. The app’s editor comes with all the essential features including smart autocomplete, multiple cursors, a Minimap, editor overscroll, tag pairs, and brackets to name a few.

Download: Nova 3 ($99)

For me, Atom is the one true replacement for Notepad++ on macOS. First of all, Atom is an open-source software which is completely free to use. It is modern and approachable and yet hackable to its core. Atom is a really powerful text-editor, which comes as no surprise, as it is developed the GitHub team.

Some of the popular packages add features like Git conflict management, project management, modal control, customizable clock in the status bar, cleaning up your code to make it more readable, search Stack Overflow, and more. Lastly, since the app is developed by the team at GitHub, you can be sure that Atom will receive support and regular updates for the foreseeable future.

If you are looking for a powerful yet cheap text-editor build specifically for Mac, look no further than Textastic. It’s the cheapest paid text-editor on this list and has been designed specifically for macOS. The app supports more than 80 source code and markup languages with auto-completion support for HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, C, and Objective-C. The app is also really fast as it uses the native macOS APIs like Core Text for maximum speed.

Download: Textastic ($7.99)

CodeRunner 4 is an affordable text-editor which has been designed specifically for a Mac. It is an advanced, highly flexible and easy to use text-editor for Mac. The software features a full-blown IDE-level code completion for most languages. The app also supports multiple languages, twenty-five to be exact which includes languages like AppleScript, C, C++, JavaScript, HTML/CSS, and more.

10. MacVim Text Editor

MacVim is the Mac clone of long standing, widely used, and extremely powerful Unix text-editor Vim. The best part about using MacVim is that every plugin which is available for original Vim text-editor works flawlessly with MacVim too. It also has all the customizability and power of Vim. It has a large and strong community which is ready to answer any question that you might have.

That concludes our list of the best Notepad++ alternatives for macOS. As you know, there can never be a single app which is best for everyone. That’s why I would suggest that you try a couple of them to see which one fits your needs. Since most of the paid ones also offer a free-trial period, it will be easy for you to try and choose the right one for you.

You don’t want to invest too much money or time in a text-editor only to find out that it’s not the one. Try them out and do let us know which among them is the one you are going with.