Pulsar text editor
Shares rank 42 of 56 text editors by recommenders
A free, hackable Atom-based code editor that web developers find pleasant to use. Some find it okay but not quite what they want.
A free, hackable Atom-based code editor that web developers find pleasant to use. Some find it okay but not quite what they want.
7 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 86%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: 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 doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 6 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
Hackable Atom-style editor with good dev experience
“a hackable IDE like Atom (Pulsar) made with the same tech it’s a pretty great dev exp for web devs”
Comment from 17 Mar 2026 in “Why Node.js needs a virtual file system” “I just went back to Atom (rather Pulsar, the last good fork).”
Comment from 26 Jun 2026 in “We All Depend on Open Source. We Will Defend It Together”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Okay but not quite what users want
“I have been using Pulsar, which is okay, but not exactly what I want.”
Comment from 26 Feb 2026 in “Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown”
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 | — |
| Pulsar text editorThis page | 6 | 1 | 86% | 6 | — | — |
What people said
6 of the 7 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“is 404 and thus not indexed by Google.”
“I just went back to Atom (rather Pulsar, the last good fork).”
“I use the Pulsar music player on Android which has an Audioscrobbler built in.”
“Everything happens on your computer. No external servers.”
“a hackable IDE like Atom (Pulsar) made with the same tech it’s a pretty great dev exp for web devs”
“I have been using Pulsar, which is okay, but not exactly what I want.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.