Kakoune
Hacker ApprovedShares rank 21 of 56 text editors by recommenders
Praised for a vim-like, selection-first editing model that composes easily with Unix tools and stays simple. Few critics; one reports a broken 'ga' command.
Praised for a vim-like, selection-first editing model that composes easily with Unix tools and stays simple. Few critics; one reports a broken 'ga' command.
20 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 18
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 90%
Recommended in 10 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 18 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 9 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 10 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
Different, refreshing editing philosophy
“The different mental model is immediately compelling in some ways, and on balance I think it's a better approach.”
Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “Helix: A post-modern text editor” “Kakoune has an attractive philosophy. There's 'editor for life' potential.”
Comment from 19 Aug 2026 in “Kakoune Code Editor” “It has great concepts to learn and a genuinely refreshing philosophy.”
Comment from 19 Aug 2026 in “Kakoune Code Editor” - Comment from 15 Feb 2026 in “Vim 9.2 Released”
Easy integration with Unix tools
“Real kakoune has another radical idea that helix doesn't touch though, which is its thorough unix integration”
Comment from 2 Nov 2025 in “Beginner-friendly, unofficial documentation for Helix text editor” “I am regularly surprised by how simple/quickly things can be done with Kakoune's shell based model”
Comment from 19 Aug 2026 in “Kakoune Code Editor” “kakoune is much more vim-like in making it easy to compose with other tools”
Comment from 11 Mar 2026 in “Writing my own text editor, and daily-driving it” - Comment from 7 Dec 2025 in “Screenshots from developers: 2002 vs. 2015 (2015)”
Simple and stable to use
“that one decision made Kakoune super stable and nice to use”
Comment from 28 Oct 2026 in “Emacs Turns 50” “ended up choosing kakoune for simplicity”
Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “Helix: A post-modern text editor” Familiar vim-like visual editing
“The visual by default editing mode of Kakoune really made me like the vim way”
Comment from 18 Aug 2026 in “Kakoune Code Editor” “kakoune is much more vim-like in making it easy to compose with other tools”
Comment from 11 Mar 2026 in “Writing my own text editor, and daily-driving it”
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 | — |
| KakouneThis page | 18 | 2 | 90% | 10 | — | Approved |
What people said
21 of the 23 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“that one decision made Kakoune super stable and nice to use”
“Just open it in Kakoune/NeoVim and change with a speed of thoughts.”
“I've been using kakoune for the past 2-3 years and it has been great.”
“I am regularly surprised by how simple/quickly things can be done with Kakoune's shell based model”
“Kakoune has an attractive philosophy. There's 'editor for life' potential.”
“It has great concepts to learn and a genuinely refreshing philosophy.”
“The visual by default editing mode of Kakoune really made me like the vim way”
“Kakoune has just enough utilities to create a on-keystroke-updated-buffer so I'm happy with that”
“the difference is that in Emacs the driver was the tool itself and in Kakoune it's always”
“This is actually a good resource for starting out with kakoune.”
“the original kakoune is just cli”
“It is really useful for refactors”
“kakoune is much more vim-like in making it easy to compose with other tools”
“The different mental model is immediately compelling in some ways, and on balance I think it's a better approach.”
“ended up choosing kakoune for simplicity”
“I like Kakoune more, conceptually.”
“Alacritty, Kakoune come to mind”
“I tried Helix and Kakoune too.”
“Kakoune makes it so easy to integrate with the rest of my system.”
“kak has "ga", which just doesn't seem to work on either system I've tried it”
“Real kakoune has another radical idea that helix doesn't touch though, which is its thorough unix integration”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.