coteditor/CotEditor

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_license

Adoption not part of the score

8413 stars · 531 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

CotEditor is a lightweight, open-source plain text editor built natively for macOS using Swift and Cocoa. It offers syntax highlighting for 60+ languages, regex find/replace, split editing, scriptable macros, and strong text encoding support with a macOS-native UI.

Use cases

• edit plain text files on mac
• lightweight code editor for macos
• syntax highlighting for html python ruby markdown
• edit files with legacy or cjk text encodings
• quickly jot down notes in a native mac app
• inspect unicode characters in a document
• run custom text macros via scripts

When to choose

• you want a fast, native macOS text editor without electron overhead
• you need accurate handling of many text encodings including CJK and vertical text
• you want a simple editor that still offers regex search, split view, and scripting

When to avoid

• you need a full IDE with debugging, refactoring, or LSP integration
• you need cross-platform editing on Windows or Linux
• you require support for macOS versions older than the last two major releases

Facets

application · maturity active

editor gui text-editors operating-systems developer-tools plain-text-editor syntax-highlighting native-app swift cocoa open-source macos

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="coteditor/CotEditor")