Every year, many new Code Editors are launched, and the developer finds it challenging to choose one. Following is a curated list of Top 15 source code and text editor software for Windows and Mac platforms. All the editors in the list are Free to use. The code editor could be standalone or integrated into an IDE.
- Best Free Code Editors for Windows & Mac
1) Notepad++
Notepad++ is a popular free to use code editor written in C++. It uses pure win32 API which offers greater execution speed and small program size. It runs only in the window's environment, and it uses GPL License.Platform: WindowsPrice: FreeFeatures:- Support syntax highlighting for languages like PHP, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS
- Auto-completion: Word completion, Function completion
- Macro recording and playback
- User-defined Syntax highlighting and folding
- Entirely customizable GUI
- Multi-view and Multi-Language support
Download link: https://notepad-plus-plus.org/2) Atom
Atom is useful code editor tool preferred by programmers due to its simple interface compared to the other editors. Atom users can submit packages and them for the software.Platform: Windows, Mac, LinuxPrice: FreeFeatures:- Package Manager Integrated for Plugins support
- The feature of smart autocompletion
- Supports Command Palette
- Multiple panes
- Allow cross-platform editing
Download link:https://atom.io/3) Visual Studio Code [VS Code]
Visual Studio Code is an open source code editor software developed by Microsoft. It offers built-in support for TypeScript, JavaScript, and Node.js. It's autocompleted with IntelliSense features provides smart completions based on variable types, essential modules, and function definitions.Platform: Mac, Windows, LinuxPrice: FreeFeatures:- Easy working with Git and other SCM (Software Configuration management) providers
- Code refactoring & debugging
- Easily extensible and customizable
Download link:https://code.visualstudio.com/4) Brackets
Brackets is a lightweight tool developed by Adobe. It is best text editor that is open source. It allows you to a toggle between your source code and the browser view.Platform: Mac, Windows, LinuxPrice: FreeFeatures:- Quick Edit UIfeature puts context-specific code and tools inline
- Offers live preview, preprocessor support, and inline editors
- Pleasant looking UI
- Especially developed tool for macOS
- It comes with the inbuilt extension manager for fast & effective extension management.
Download link:http://brackets.io/5) NetBeans
NetBeans is an open-source code editor tool for developing with Java, PHP, C++, and other programming languages. With this editor, code analyzers, and converters. It allows you to upgrade your applications to use new Java 8 language constructs.Platforms: Mac Windows LinuxPrice: FreeFeatures:- Easy & Efficient Project Management
- Offers fast & Smart Code Editing
- Rapid User Interface Development
- Helps you to write bug-free code
Download link:https://netbeans.org6) Bluefish
Bluefish a is a cross-platform editor is a speedy tool which can handle dozens of files simultaneously. The tool allows developers to conduct remote editing. This code editor tool offers many options to s programmers and web developers, to write websites, scripts, and programming code.Price: FreePlatforms: Mac Windows LinuxFeatures:- Loads hundreds of files within seconds
- Auto-recovery of changes in modified documents after a crash, kill or shutdown.
- Project support feature helps you to work efficiently on multiple projects.
- Unlimited undo/redo functionality.
Download link: http://bluefish.openoffice.nl/index.html7) VIM
Vim is an advanced text editor open source tool which is also considered to be an IDE in its way. This tool allows managing your text editing activities with vim editors and UNIX System which can be used on-premise or online.Price: FreePlatform: LinuxFeatures:- Extensive plugin support
- Powerful search and replace
- Integrates with many tools
- Macro recording and playback
- Support for hundreds of programming languages and file formats
Download link: https://www.vim.org/8) Geany
Geany is a text editor which uses GTK+ toolkit. It also has certain basic features of an integrated development environment. The tool supports many filetypes and has some nice features.Price: FreePlatform: Mac, Windows, LinuxFeatures:- Allows you to add a note for applying the indent settings in the project preferences
- Navigating through the source code
- Allows popup menu on message window notebooks and sidebar
- Show status message on attempt to execute empty context action
Download link: https://www.geany.org9) Komodo Edit
Komodo edit is an easy to use and powerful code editing tool. It allows you to do debugging, unit testing, code refactoring. It also provides code profile, plus integrations with other technologies like Grunt, PhoneGap, Docker, Vagrant and many more.Price: Free TrialPlatform: Mac, Windows, LinuxFeatures:- Multi-Language Editor
- A lot of contemporary color schemes
- Native Unicode support and Unicode compatibility checking
- Easily integrates into the desktop environment.
Download link: https://www.activestate.com/products/komodo-edit/10) Emacs
Emacs is a Unix based text editor tool which is used by programmers, engineers, students, and system administrators. It allows you to add, modify, delete, insert, words, letters, lines, and other units of text.Price: FreePlatform: Mac, Windows, LinuxFeatures:- Complete built-in documentation
- Full Unicode support for many human scripts
- Highly customizable, using Emacs Lisp code.
- A packaging system for installing and downloading extensions
Download link: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/11) jEdit
jEdit, a code editor program which is written in Java. This open source tool supports hundreds of plugins and macros. It offers a large collection of plugins maintained by a worldwide developer team.Features:- Built-in macro language & extensible plugin architecture
- Allows copy and paste with an unlimited number of clipboards
- You can download plugins with the help of the plugin manager.
- Register contents are saved across editing sessions.
- Allows auto indent, and syntax highlighting over 200 languages
Price: FreePlatform: Mac, Windows & LinuxDownload link: http://www.jedit.org/12) TextMate
TextMate is a versatile plain text editor for mac with unique and innovative features. The tool offers support for many programming languages, writing prose in structured formats such as blogging, running SQL queries, writing screenplays, etc.Price: FreePlatform: MACFeatures:- Auto-Indent for Common Actions
- CSS-like Selectors to find the Scope of Actions and Settings
- Dynamic Outline for Working With Multiple Files
- Function Pop-up for Quick Overview and Navigation
- Run Shell Commands from Within a Document
- Visual Bookmarks to Jump Between Places in a File
Download link: http://macromates.com/13) gedit
Gedit tool is designed as a general-purpose text editor. It offers simple and eases to use GUI. It includes features for editing source code and structured text like markup languages.Price: FreePlatforms: Mac & WindowsFeatures:- Support for syntax highlighting for languages like C, C++, Java, HTML, XML, Python, etc.
- Editing files from remote locations
- Support for text wrapping and auto indentation
- Search and replace with the support of regular expressions
- A flexible plugin system which allows you to add new features
Download link: https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Gedit14) Light Table
Light Table is an IDE and text editor tool for coding software. The tool offers fast feedback and allowing instant execution, debugging and access to documentation.Price: FreePlatform: Mac, Windows, LinuxFeatures:- Inline Evaluation
- Light Table is a lightweight, clean, and sleek interface.
- Powerful editing and plugin manager
- The feature of println to keep track of critical values in your code
Download link: http://lighttable.com/15) Blue Griffon
BlueGriffon is an open source HTML editor powered by Gecko, which is Firefox's rendering engine. It has a simple interface and most usual features needed to create web pages that are compliant with W3C web standards.Platform: Mac, Windows, LinuxFeatures:- Easy to change the color of font or to adjust the border style
- Opens Tabs from Last Session
- Shortcuts for CSS Editing
- Multiple Themes for Source View
Download link: http://bluegriffon.org
React is a popular JavaScript library developed by Facebook for building web application user interfaces. The Visual Studio Code editor supports React.js IntelliSense and code navigation out of the box.
Welcome to React
We'll be using the
create-react-app
generator for this tutorial. To use the generator as well as run the React application server, you'll need Node.js JavaScript runtime and npm (Node.js package manager) installed. npm is included with Node.js which you can download and install from Node.js downloads.Dec 22, 2019 If you find Deco IDE as a recommendation on some websites, be careful! Deco IDE used to be one of the best IDE for react native development three years back, was supported on MacOS but is not getting regular updates anymore. As of writing this article, the last time this React IDE got an update was minimum 3 years ago.
- Using props and state, we can put together a small Todo application.This example uses state to track the current list of items as well as the text that the user has entered. Although event handlers appear to be rendered inline, they will be collected and implemented using event delegation.
- Jan 08, 2020 Significant speed, clutter-free interface, enhanced pane-management, Go to the definition and Go to features are some of its significant features. Furthermore, you can use Babel plugin (syntax highlight for ReactJS and ES6 code), DocBlockr, JSFormat, SideBar, SublimeLinter and SideBar Enhancements.
- Atom Almost all the technologies can be benefited by this open source text editor for OS X, Windows, and Linux. Visual Studio Code.
Tip: To test that you have Node.js and npm correctly installed on your machine, you can type
node --version
and npm --version
in a terminal or command prompt.You can now create a new React application by typing:
where
my-app
is the name of the folder for your application. This may take a few minutes to create the React application and install its dependencies.Note: If you've previously installed
create-react-app
globally via npm install -g create-react-app
, we recommend you uninstall the package using npm uninstall -g create-react-app
to ensure that npx always uses the latest version.Let's quickly run our React application by navigating to the new folder and typing
npm start
to start the web server and open the application in a browser:You should see the React logo and a link to 'Learn React' on http://localhost:3000 in your browser. We'll leave the web server running while we look at the application with VS Code.
To open your React application in VS Code, open another terminal or command prompt window, navigate to the
my-app
folder and type code .
:Markdown preview
In the File Explorer, one file you'll see is the application
README.md
Markdown file. This has lots of great information about the application and React in general. A nice way to review the README is by using the VS Code Markdown Preview. You can open the preview in either the current editor group (Markdown: Open Preview⇧⌘V (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+V)) or in a new editor group to the side (Markdown: Open Preview to the Side⌘K V (Windows, Linux Ctrl+K V)). You'll get nice formatting, hyperlink navigation to headers, and syntax highlighting in code blocks.Syntax highlighting and bracket matching
Now expand the
src
folder and select the index.js
file. You'll notice that VS Code has syntax highlighting for the various source code elements and, if you put the cursor on a parenthesis, the matching bracket is also selected.IntelliSense
As you start typing in
index.js
, you'll see smart suggestions or completions.After you select a suggestion and type
.
, you see the types and methods on the object through IntelliSense.VS Code uses the TypeScript language service for its JavaScript code intelligence and it has a feature called Automatic Type Acquisition (ATA). ATA pulls down the npm Type Declaration files (
*.d.ts
) for the npm modules referenced in the package.json
.If you select a method, you'll also get parameter help:
Go to Definition, Peek definition
Through the TypeScript language service, VS Code can also provide type definition information in the editor through Go to Definition (F12) or Peek Definition (⌥F12 (Windows Alt+F12, Linux Ctrl+Shift+F10)). Put the cursor over the
App
, right click and select Peek Definition. A Peek window will open showing the App
definition from App.js
.Press Escape to close the Peek window.
Best Macos Editor For Reactjs Windows 7
Hello World!
Let's update the sample application to 'Hello World!'. Add the link to declare a new H1 header and replace the
<App />
tag in ReactDOM.render
with element
.Once you save the
index.js
file, the running instance of the server will update the web page and you'll see 'Hello World!'.Tip: VS Code supports Auto Save, which by default saves your files after a delay. Check the Auto Save option in the File menu to turn on Auto Save or directly configure the
files.autoSave
user setting.Debugging React
To debug the client side React code, we'll need to install the Debugger for Chrome extension.
Note: This tutorial assumes you have the Chrome browser installed. There are also debugger extensions for the Edge and Firefox browsers.
Open the Extensions view (⇧⌘X (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+X)) and type 'chrome' in the search box. You'll see several extensions which reference Chrome.
Press the Install button for Debugger for Chrome.
Set a breakpoint
To set a breakpoint in
index.js
, click on the gutter to the left of the line numbers. This will set a breakpoint which will be visible as a red circle.Configure the Chrome debugger
We need to initially configure the debugger. To do so, go to the Run view (⇧⌘D (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+D)) and click create a launch.json file to customize Run and Debug. Choose Chrome from the Select Environment drop-down list. This will create a
launch.json
file in a new .vscode
folder in your project which includes a configuration to launch the website.We need to make one change for our example: change the port of the
url
from 8080
to 3000
. Your launch.json
should look like this:Ensure that your development server is running (
npm start
). Then press F5 or the green arrow to launch the debugger and open a new browser instance. The source code where the breakpoint is set runs on startup before the debugger was attached, so we won't hit the breakpoint until we refresh the web page. Refresh the page and you should hit your breakpoint.You can step through your source code (F10), inspect variables such as
element
, and see the call stack of the client side React application.The Debugger for Chrome extension README has lots of information on other configurations, working with sourcemaps, and troubleshooting. You can review it directly within VS Code from the Extensions view by clicking on the extension item and opening the Details view.
Live editing and debugging
If you are using webpack together with your React app, you can have a more efficient workflow by taking advantage of webpack's HMR mechanism which enables you to have live editing and debugging directly from VS Code. You can learn more in this Live edit and debug your React apps directly from VS Code blog post and the webpack Hot Module Replacement documentation.
Linting
Linters analyze your source code and can warn you about potential problems before you run your application. The JavaScript language services included with VS Code has syntax error checking support by default, which you can see in action in the Problems panel (View > Problems⇧⌘M (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+M)).
Try making a small error in your React source code and you'll see a red squiggle and an error in the Problems panel.
Linters can provide more sophisticated analysis, enforcing coding conventions and detecting anti-patterns. A popular JavaScript linter is ESLint. ESLint, when combined with the ESLint VS Code extension, provides a great in-product linting experience.
First, install the ESLint command-line tool:
Then install the ESLint extension by going to the Extensions view and typing 'eslint'.
Once the ESLint extension is installed and VS Code reloaded, you'll want to create an ESLint configuration file,
.eslintrc.js
. You can create one using the extension's ESLint: Create ESLint configuration command from the Command Palette (⇧⌘P (Windows, Linux Ctrl+Shift+P)).The command will prompt you to answer a series of questions in the Terminal panel. Take the defaults, and it will create a
.eslintrc.js
file in your project root that looks something like this:ESLint will now analyze open files and shows a warning in
index.js
about 'App' being defined but never used.You can modify the ESLint rules in the
.eslintrc.js
file.Let's add an error rule for extra semi-colons:
Now when you mistakenly have multiple semicolons on a line, you'll see an error (red squiggle) in the editor and error entry in the Problems panel.
Best Macos Editor For Reactjs Free
Popular Starter Kits
In this tutorial, we used the
create-react-app
generator to create a simple React application. There are lots of great samples and starter kits available to help build your first React application.VS Code React Sample
This is a sample React application used for a demo at the 2016 //Build conference. The sample creates a simple TODO application and includes the source code for a Node.js Express server. It also shows how to use the Babel ES6 transpiler and then use webpack to bundle the site assets.
MERN
There is helpful VS Code-specific documentation at vscode-recipes which details setting up Node.js server debugging. VS Code also has great MongoDB support through the Azure Cosmos DB extension.
TypeScript React
If you're curious about TypeScript and React, you can also create a TypeScript version of the
create-react-app
application. See the details at TypeScript-React-Starter on the TypeScript Quick Start site.Angular
Angular is another popular web framework. If you'd like to see an example of Angular working with VS Code, check out the Chrome Debugging with Angular CLI recipe. It will walk you through creating an Angular application and configuring the
launch.json
file for the Debugger for Chrome extension.Common questions
Can I get IntelliSense within declarative JSX?
Best Editor For Reactjs
Yes. For example, if you open the
create-react-app
project's App.js
file, you can see IntelliSense within the React JSX in the render()
method.