10 Best HTML Text Editors for Your Mac

Macs come with TextEdit, a default editor for creating/editing plain text files and other file types. As a plaintext editor, it doesn’t automatically feature advanced options like syntax highlighting and code completion and that’s the reason why a robust text editor is essential.

Whether you’re a beginner to writing code or a seasoned software developer looking to make a pick for your digital swiss knife, here is a list of the best HTML editors available for macOS.

1. Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code is a robust free and open-source cross-platform text editor optimized for building and debugging modern applications. It features a beautiful and themeable user interface with a library of extensions for added functionality.

Feature Highlights

  • Intellisense
  • Built-in Git
  • Support for extensions
  • Built-in debugger
  • Syntax highlighting and code folding
  • Files, folders, and workspaces
  • Deploy software
Visual Studio Editor For Mac
Visual Studio Editor For Mac

2. Atom

Atom is an electron-powered text editor built with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Node.js integration. It features a simple, customizable user interface with support for several programming languages, Teletype for collaboration, and GitHub integration.

Feature Highlights

  • Free and open-source
  • Customizable user interface
  • Autocompletion
  • FIle system browser
  • GitHub integration
  • Built-in package manager
  • Find and replace
Atom Text Editor For Mac
Atom Text Editor For Mac

3. Brackets

Brackets is a powerful yet lightweight modern text editor built to with web designers and front-end developers in mind. It features focused visual tools and preprocessor support that makes it easy to work with modern web browsers.
Feature Highlights

  • Free and open-source
  • Extension registry
  • Inline editing
  • Live preview
  • Preprocessor support
  • Support for extensions
  • Built-in W3C validation
Brackets Text Editor For Mac
Brackets Text Editor For Mac

4. Coda 2

Coda 2 is a premium text editing application designed for web developers and it houses features that make it easy to edit code of live websites easily as well as to access project files from remote locations.

The developers are currently working on Nova, a revamped text editor that is soon to be released with a lot more features than those in Coda 2 especially a more aesthetically pleasing UI.

Feature Highlights

  • Costs $99 (available for free as a trial version)
  • Syntax highlighting and symbol parsing
  • Built-in WebKit preview with a web inspector, debugger, and profiler
  • Local indexing
  • Touchbar support
  • Plugin manager
  • Remote file editing using FTP
  • CSS overriding on live websites
  • Panic synchronization using private keys
Coda 2 Text Editor For Mac
Coda 2 Text Editor For Mac

5. Espresso

Espresso is an advanced text editor designed for Mac operating systems. It houses functions that enable users to efficiently write, code, design, build, and publish software with features such as CSSEdit tools, live preview, server synchronization, and native macOS design scheme.

Feature Highlights

  • Costs $99 with a free trial
  • Beautiful UI
  • CSSEdit tools
  • Navigator tool
  • Live preview with Browser Xray
  • Server synchronization
  • Dynamo auto-building
Espresso Text Editor For Mac
Espresso Text Editor For Mac

6. BBEdit

BBEdit is an award-winning professional text editor built for web authors and software developers on macOS. It ships with features that enable users to design, edit, search, and manipulate code using Git and subversion integration, search and replace across multiple files, project definition tools, etc.

BBEdit offers a free 30-day trial with all of its features after which the app will be free to use forever with advanced features restricted to advanced users.

Feature Highlights

  • Costs $49.99
  • FTP and SFTP support
  • Git and Subversion integration
  • AppleScript
  • Support for macOS Unix scripting
  • Text and code completion
  • Search and replace
  • Grep pattern matching
BBEdit Text Editor For Mac
BBEdit Text Editor For Mac

7. Sublime Text 3

Sublime Text 3 is an advanced cross-platform text editor designed to provide users with a complete feature set for HTML editing among other languages.

Right out of the box it supports tons of languages with options for “Goto Anything“, character and word count, jump to symbols and lines, batch editing, etc.

Sublime Text is free to use without any strings attached with the exception of a pop-up every now and then that reminds developers to purchase a license. A personal license costs $80.

Feature Highlights

  • Free (optional license)
  • Multiple colour schemes
  • Text rendering
  • Syntax highlighting
  • Code folding
  • Incremental diff
  • Git integration
Sublime Text 3 Editor For Mac
Sublime Text 3 Editor For Mac

8. UltraEdit

UltraEdit is a powerful, secure, and fast Mac text editor designed to supercharge the productivity of web developers with enterprise-grade features ideal for personal and business projects. It offers a free 30-day trial with a money-back guarantee.

Feature Highlights

  • Subscription starting from $79.95/year
  • Customizable, configurable themes
  • OS integration via command line and shell extension
  • Fully integrated instant diff operations, file compare, etc.
  • Digitally signed installers and binaries
  • Syntax highlighting and autocompletion
  • Code folding and multi-caret/multi-select
  • HMTL live preview
  • Integrated FTP, SSH, and Telnet
UltraEdit Text Editor For Mac
UltraEdit Text Editor For Mac

9. CodeRunner 3

Code Runner 3 is a lightweight, multi-language programming editor with IDE-level code completion for macOS. It is designed to speed boost developers’ productivity with features such as fuzzy-search, documentation snippets, tab-selectable placeholders, etc.

Code runner is a paid app but it has a free installation package that enables users to test the app before deciding whether or not to make a purchase.

Feature Highlights

  • Costs $14.99 for a personal license
  • Advanced code completion
  • Supports 25 languages out-of-the-box
  • Built-in debugging with breakpoints
  • Documentation sidebar
  • Multiple selections
  • Symbol navigator
  • Run with arguments & input sets
  • Code templates
  • Support for automatic indentation
Code Runner 3 Text Editor For Mac
Code Runner 3 Text Editor For Mac

10. Emacs

Emacs is a libre extensible, customizable command line-based text editor with an interpreter for Emacs Lisp at its core. It features a robust set of text editing tools with support for extensions that extend its functionality.

Feature Highlights

  • Content-aware editing
  • Built-in documentation
  • Syntax colouring for several file types
  • Real-time display editor
  • Experimental support for Cairo drawing
  • An optional graphical interface
Emacs Text Editor For Mac
Emacs Text Editor For Mac

Congratulations, you now know the top-notch options for editing HTML files on your Mac as developed and maintained by some of the world’s best companies. They feature themes, plugin extensions, native support for 3rd party applications, productivity shortcuts, and a resource-friendly workflow.

Which one do you have installed on your machine? Feel free to share your user experience with us in the comments section below.

Divine Okoi is a cybersecurity postgrad with a passion for the open-source community. With 700+ articles covering different topics in IT, you can always trust him to inform you about the coolest tech.

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