Geany
Hacker ApprovedShares rank 36 of 56 text editors by recommenders
Simple, free editor for plain text and code, built on the same Scintilla component as Notepad++. Critics say it lacks some essential features.
Simple, free editor for plain text and code, built on the same Scintilla component as Notepad++. Critics say it lacks some essential features.
11 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 10
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 91%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 10 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 10 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 8 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Shares Notepad++'s Scintilla editor component
“Other Scintilla-based editors with a similar feel (but missing the Lua angle) are Geany and Kate”
Comment from 3 Mar 2026 in “Textadept” “Both npp and geany use the same editor component.”
Comment from 4 Feb 2026 in “Notepad++ supply chain attack breakdown” Simple, comfortable plain-text editing
“extreme amounts of copying/pasting/executing in Geany (a relatively simple editor)”
Comment from 5 Jan 2026 in “I switched from VSCode to Zed” “For a pure text editing experience, I've always felt most comfortable with Geany.”
Comment from 29 Apr 2026 in “Zed is 1.0”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Lacks some essential features
“finding it lacking some essential features for my needs”
Comment from 4 Mar 2026 in “Textadept” Mediocre experience overall
“Using geany for a week or so hasn't been terrible but its not great either.”
Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “You Need to Ditch VS Code”
Other text editors people recommend
The four most recommended other text editors, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zed | 700 | 430 | 62% | 13 | 6 mo57 owners | — |
| GNU Emacs | 648 | 207 | 76% | 13 | 20 yrs158 owners | Approved |
| Vim | 513 | 127 | 80% | 13 | 20 yrs55 owners | Approved |
| Visual Studio Code | 485 | 547 | 47% | 12 | 2 yrs13 owners | — |
| GeanyThis page | 10 | 1 | 91% | 8 | — | Approved |
What people said
9 of the 11 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I used to print a lot of code from Geany, that has some nice support for printing line numbers and code highlights”
“For a pure text editing experience, I've always felt most comfortable with Geany.”
“finding it lacking some essential features for my needs”
“Other Scintilla-based editors with a similar feel (but missing the Lua angle) are Geany and Kate”
“Both npp and geany use the same editor component.”
“lately I have been using geany on Windows, mostly for convenience”
“extreme amounts of copying/pasting/executing in Geany (a relatively simple editor)”
“Using geany for a week or so hasn't been terrible but its not great either.”
“from Inkscape to Celestia to Geany and Python”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.