The Best Plain Text Editors for Mac in 2025

Tools · 6 min read · March 2025

macOS ships with TextEdit. It works. But if you're opening plain text files regularly, there are editors that will make your life noticeably easier. Here's a breakdown of the options worth knowing about in 2025, from free to paid, minimal to feature-rich.

TextEdit — already on your Mac

Best for: quick one-off edits when you don't want to install anything.

TextEdit is free, always available, and gets the job done for simple text editing. Its main weakness is the default Rich Text mode, which you should disable in Settings → New Document → Plain Text the moment you start using it for anything serious. Once that's done it's a reasonable basic editor. It has no line numbers, no tabs, no syntax highlighting, and no search-and-replace with regular expressions — but it opens fast and requires zero setup.

BBEdit — the Mac classic

Best for: writers and developers who want a serious, dependable Mac-native editor.

BBEdit has been on Mac since 1992. It's a proper text editor with line numbers, multi-file search, regex find-and-replace, syntax highlighting for dozens of languages, and a clean interface that hasn't chased design trends. The free version is genuinely useful. The paid license ($49.99 one-time) unlocks more features, but most people never need them. If you want one editor that handles everything from quick notes to complex code on macOS, BBEdit is the answer.

Zed — fast and modern

Best for: developers who want VS Code speed without Electron overhead.

Zed is a newer editor built in Rust, designed to be fast. It's free and open source. The interface is clean, it handles large files well, and it has built-in collaboration features if you work with others. It's primarily aimed at developers but works fine as a plain text editor. If you've found VS Code sluggish, Zed is worth trying.

VS Code — the ecosystem

Best for: developers who want extensions, Git integration, and terminal access in one window.

VS Code is free, runs on everything, and has extensions for almost anything. For pure plain text editing it's overkill, but if you're also writing code and want one editor for everything, it's hard to argue against it. The main downside is that it's built on Electron — it's heavier than native apps and takes longer to start up.

iA Writer — distraction-free writing

Best for: writers who work in Markdown and want a focused, beautiful interface.

iA Writer is a paid app ($49.99 one-time on Mac) designed around focused writing. It uses Markdown, syncs with iCloud, and strips away everything that isn't the words. It's not a code editor — it's for prose. If you write articles, essays, or long-form content and want your tools to get out of the way, it's excellent. For plain .txt files specifically, it's fine but you're paying for Markdown features you might not use.

Typora — Markdown with live preview

Best for: Markdown writers who want to see formatting as they write.

Typora renders Markdown formatting inline as you type rather than showing raw markup. It's $14.99 one-time. Good for documentation writing and notes in Markdown. Like iA Writer, it's not aimed at plain .txt specifically, but it handles them fine.

The browser option: txtnote.online

Best for: creating a .txt file quickly without opening or installing any app.

Sometimes you just need a .txt file and don't want to open an editor, navigate to a folder, name a file, and save it. txtnote.online lets you paste or type text, name it, and download a proper UTF-8 .txt file in a few seconds. Nothing installed, nothing signed up for. Useful as a complement to a local editor rather than a replacement.

Quick pick guide

  • Free + already installed: TextEdit (change default to Plain Text first)
  • Best all-round Mac editor: BBEdit
  • Best for developers: Zed or VS Code
  • Best for writers: iA Writer or Typora
  • Best for a quick one-off file: txtnote.online