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Does anyone know any good free text editor with code highlighting for Mac?

I'd rather not pay for Texmate even though it looks awesome. I don't think I need all the features as a beginner.

When I'm stuck on my mac I use Eclipse.

I use text wrangler you can set it to almost any type of code language.

windextor wrote:Does anyone know any good free text editor with code highlighting for Mac?

I'd rather not pay for Texmate even though it looks awesome. I don't think I need all the features as a beginner.

TextMate is God of all text editors :p, I know you're looking for a free editor but honestly for beginners and professionals, it's all you'll ever need.
I've used it for a couple of years now and i find it very hard to switch to anything else now. It's just so lovely
The only downside to it is its lack of remote development features such as FTP and SSH support however there are bundles which I have come across to manoeuvre round this obstacle.
Again, I know you want a free editor, but I just wanted to point out that TextMate is like my baby. I love it and can never be without it in my dock.

Having said all this, TextWrangler is a good choice albiet a little lacking in the UI department. There is also KomodoEdit which my friend (who also loves TextMate) has pointed out to be rather good. I'll try it tonight I think.

Good luck in finding your future partner

If you are going to spend money, buy Coda. If you want to use a free editor, i recommend NetBeans. It works well, is lower on resources then Eclipse. However, if you are smart, install Windows and just use normal applications. Solves most of your problems hehe.

For general purpose use I'd say Textmate > Coda. Coda is amazing, totally amazing, but mostly intended for web development. I <3 how it works with CSS though. In the spirit of springing for more, if you are just doing web development I'd recommend getting Coda. But its 99 where Textmate is like 35?

Honestly though, if you are using the Mac (implying that you have more money to spend on a system, and/or you are doing iOS development). Springing for TextMate is worth it.

Yeah, true. You can also download X Code, which is the default code editor for Mac. You can get it for free, however, and correct me if i`m wrong, you`ll have to register to Apple ( say what?! Ya.. ) Anyway, I had to register at the time ( 3 years ago ). It`s not ideal for regular development work, neither is it any good for word processing. Anyway, it`s the default editor, and you can make i/Phone/Pad/Touch applications with it.

I have always personally leaned more towards IDEs than text editors. I know the text editors of today have many of the same features, but today's IDEs are often very heavy on intellisense-style features, which simple code highlighting really can't hold a candle to. Once you really learn an IDE like Eclipse or Netbeans, you can easily reduce your keystrokes by 65% or more. Plus, most IDEs have a deeper understanding of the language syntax and can catch many errors as you are typing, which most text editors don't seem to do. I would suggest looking into a full IDE rather than spending money on a simple text editor (even if it does have tons of bells'n'whistles).

Xaleph wrote:Yeah, true. You can also download X Code, which is the default code editor for Mac. You can get it for free, however, and correct me if i`m wrong, you`ll have to register to Apple ( say what?! Ya.. ) Anyway, I had to register at the time ( 3 years ago ). It`s not ideal for regular development work, neither is it any good for word processing. Anyway, it`s the default editor, and you can make i/Phone/Pad/Touch applications with it.

Yep, you have to register. Apple is like that with their developer tools, I think if you have an existing apple account that works though. Most mac users will already have one for iTunes and stuff, so it's only slightly less annoying than stuff like having to register with Zend to download their framework.

You can code on a mac??? Weird, I thought it was just a over priced mp3 player.....