# TextEdit

15 Hacker News commenters recommended TextEdit and 11 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 8 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People recommend it as a simple, lightweight Mac text editor that works reliably. Critics say it is buggy, neglected, and has confusing save behavior.

## Why people recommend it

- Simple, lightweight, minimal text editor (2 comments): "It's such a simple, little quality-of-life thing." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46798483)) "perfectly cromulent minimum viable text editor" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48229401))
- Reliable and works well (2 comments): "It's barely changed since NeXTSTEP and works flawlessly" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46975770)) "Tested this now. Works like a bomb." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47921991))

## What people warn about

- Buggy, freezes, copies wrong text (3 comments): "cause of a bug where I'd highlight text, copy, and it's actually copy the wrong block" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47173712)) "The bug froze TextEdit and I can no longer access Finder's top menu bar." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49919552)) "TextEdit has become a neglected buggy mess." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50192882))
- Confusing save and delete behavior (3 comments): "A power user who is aware that they didn’t save would be confused, as there isn’t any file to delete." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49392407)) "I magically quit the application hitting cancel when there was to save the document" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45892947)) ""Delete" is the wrong verb, suggests I'm deleting the file, which I'm not." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49389983))
- Neglected, lacking, and missing features (4 comments): "there's still no way to access any of the widgets up top" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48449670)) "keeps the built-in TextEdit at its crappy state" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49267792)) "I found TextEdit to be seriously lacking" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48835753))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Windows Notepad](https://hackerapproved.com/p/windows-notepad.md): 86 recommend
- [Microsoft Edit](https://hackerapproved.com/p/edit-exe.md): 10 recommend
- [CotEditor](https://hackerapproved.com/p/coteditor.md): 9 recommend
- [Pico text editor](https://hackerapproved.com/p/pico.md): 6 recommend
- [Atto text editor (NetBSD)](https://hackerapproved.com/p/atto-text-editor.md): 6 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "TextEdit", https://hackerapproved.com/p/textedit/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).