How to Force TextEdit into Plain Text Mode Every Time

TextEdit is the default text editor on every Mac. It ships with macOS, it's free, and for basic writing tasks it works perfectly well. The problem is that it defaults to Rich Text mode — a format that looks like plain text but quietly embeds invisible formatting data into every file you save.

If you've ever created a "plain text" file in TextEdit and had another program choke on it, this is almost certainly why. The fix is straightforward, but it's buried just deep enough in Preferences that most people never find it.

The fix: change the default format

Open TextEdit and go to the menu bar. On macOS Ventura and later, it's TextEdit → Settings. On older versions it's TextEdit → Preferences. Either way, the keyboard shortcut is ⌘,.

In the window that opens, you'll see a New Document tab. At the top there's a Format section with two options: Rich Text and Plain Text. Click Plain Text.

Close the window. From this point on, every new document TextEdit creates will be genuine plain text. Files will save with a .txt extension by default and won't contain any hidden formatting data.

One more setting to check: smart quotes

While you're in Settings, click the New Document tab and look for the Substitutions section. If you're creating plain text files for use in code, scripts, or config files, turn off Smart Quotes and Smart Dashes. These substitutions replace straight quotes (" ") with curly quotes (" ") and double hyphens (--) with em dashes (—), which breaks a lot of code.

You can also turn these off per-document under Edit → Substitutions in the menu bar.

Converting an open document on the fly

If you open an existing Rich Text file and want to convert it without changing your default settings, go to Format → Make Plain Text in the menu bar. TextEdit will warn you that formatting will be removed. Confirm it, then save. The file is now plain text.

When TextEdit still isn't the right tool

Even in Plain Text mode, TextEdit is a basic editor. It has no line numbers, no syntax highlighting, no find-and-replace with regex, and no tabs. For anything beyond casual note-taking, you'll get a better experience from a dedicated plain text editor or from a browser-based tool like txtnote.online when you just need a quick file without opening any app at all.

The short version: TextEdit → Settings → New Document → Plain Text. That one change makes TextEdit a reliable plain text editor instead of a Rich Text trap. Thirty seconds to fix, and you'll never accidentally create a corrupted "plain text" file again.