Kate text editor
Hacker ApprovedRanked 13 of 56 text editors by recommenders
Fast, native KDE text editor that people use for quick edits and coding, with LSP support and a plugin system. Caveat: some find it has too many options and features.
Fast, native KDE text editor that people use for quick edits and coding, with LSP support and a plugin system. Caveat: some find it has too many options and features.
56 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 49
- criticize it
- 7
- approval share
- 88%
Recommended in 11 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 49 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 7 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 11 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
Fast, responsive native app
“With Kate it is like with a basic text edit, characters appears instantly.”
Comment from 11 Mar 2026 in “Writing my own text editor, and daily-driving it” “Good old style editor that is a native app, not an electron app.”
Comment from 11 Mar 2026 in “Writing my own text editor, and daily-driving it” “A key benefit of it is that it's not an electron app.”
Comment from 25 Feb 2026 in “Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown” - Comment from 3 May 2026 in “VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage”
- Comment from 16 Dec 2025 in “VS Code deactivates IntelliCode in favor of the paid Copilot”
Good for quick file edits
“I find KATE on KDE is good enough, when I just want to edit a file”
Comment from 20 Mar 2026 in “Our Commitment to Windows Quality” “just put in the URL and edit the file in kate!”
Comment from 3 Jan 2026 in “2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop” “It is actually a fantastic document editor.”
Comment from 29 Apr 2026 in “Zed is 1.0” VS Code-like features with LSP
“Kate is very good, you can legitimately use it as a vscode replacement if you want.”
Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “Plasma Bigscreen – 10-foot interface for KDE plasma” “its base feature set isn't too different from a base VS Code installation”
Comment from 18 Nov 2025 in “Google Antigravity” “my main programming editor, coupled with clangd for C/C++ programming”
Comment from 1 Jun 2026 in “KDE at 30” - Comment from 30 Aug 2026 in “A few feral cats in an ALGOL trenchcoat.”
- Comment from 19 Nov 2025 in “Google Antigravity”
Useful file browser and CLI
“Kate has a decent file browser for hierarchy and it'll stay in place and not return to a weird default path when you close it.”
Comment from 11 Mar 2026 in “Writing my own text editor, and daily-driving it” “Another nice thing is the ability to collect paths, line and column numbers from the output for navigation.”
Comment from 21 May 2026 in “BBEdit 16” “Examples of good CLI integration I regularly use”
Comment from 21 Aug 2026 in “Stop Making TUIs”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Too many options and features
“it has way too many option I will never use”
Comment from 2 Sep 2026 in “Fine, I'll build my own text editor” “which was great, had too much going on”
Comment from 2 Sep 2026 in “Fine, I'll build my own text editor” Slower and heavier than rivals
“it is slower than Sublime Text in my machine though still tolerable”
Comment from 2 Sep 2026 in “Fine, I'll build my own text editor” “takes much longer to open up and looks much much heavier”
Comment from 1 Jun 2026 in “KDE at 30” Missing features and extensions
“It's missing features, but it sure is snappy.”
Comment from 18 May 2026 in “No More JetBrains Products for Me” “I just wish the extension ecosystem was more fleshed out”
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 | — |
| Kate text editorThis page | 49 | 7 | 88% | 11 | — | Approved |
What people said
40 of the 71 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“worked quite well on last time I had to use Windows”
“it is slower than Sublime Text in my machine though still tolerable”
“it has way too many option I will never use”
“which was great, had too much going on”
“Kate is close in feel to TurboWhatever IDEs”
“Examples of good CLI integration I regularly use”
“Kate is a bit unwieldy—far from invisible—but I've found it to be the most frictionless editor on the market by a wide margin.”
“it already supports lsp server & has a established plugin infra so it should not really be any blockers”
“there are still a lot of good ones still there that continue to improve every day”
“takes much longer to open up and looks much much heavier”
“A lot of the KDE-branded software was high quality, too”
“my main programming editor, coupled with clangd for C/C++ programming”
“Another nice thing is the ability to collect paths, line and column numbers from the output for navigation.”
“It's missing features, but it sure is snappy.”
“kate as well. (But maybe with kate I just need to modify the key bindings”
“faster and better behaved in most cases anyway”
“It is actually a fantastic document editor.”
“Kate/Featherpad offers a superior experience for this”
“Otherwise Kate or Gedit are just fine for Linux.”
“sometimes I want Kate editor and sometimes I want Akelpad”
“I like kde's Kate. A bit more than notepad but not as crazy as notepad++.”
“I find KATE on KDE is good enough, when I just want to edit a file”
“With Kate it is like with a basic text edit, characters appears instantly.”
“every "tab" is really its own entire editor with its own state”
“That was such a productivity booster for me that simply there are no words to describe the difference felt.”
“I just wish the extension ecosystem was more fleshed out”
“I'm a big Kate fan as well, used it for years on all my Linux systems.”
“Kate has a decent file browser for hierarchy and it'll stay in place and not return to a weird default path when you close it.”
“Good old style editor that is a native app, not an electron app.”
“I think Kate does that, it just also has a bunch of other functionality.”
“Kate is very good, you can legitimately use it as a vscode replacement if you want.”
“Other Scintilla-based editors with a similar feel (but missing the Lua angle) are Geany and Kate”
“A key benefit of it is that it's not an electron app.”
“For something functionality close I would look at Kate.”
“More modern editors like Sublime Text, Kate, or even Notepad have an advantage of being intuitive.”
“just put in the URL and edit the file in kate!”
“Super responsive and fast under Asahi.”
“Many KDE apps (Dolphin, Kate, Okular, etc.) let you configure their tool bars”
“New versions integrate nicely with LSPs”
“its base feature set isn't too different from a base VS Code installation”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.