TextEdit
Shares rank 24 of 56 text editors by recommenders
People recommend it as a simple, lightweight Mac text editor that works reliably. Critics say it is buggy, neglected, and has confusing save behavior.
People recommend it as a simple, lightweight Mac text editor that works reliably. Critics say it is buggy, neglected, and has confusing save behavior.
26 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 15
- criticize it
- 11
- approval share
- 58%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 15 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not 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
Simple, lightweight, minimal text editor
“It's such a simple, little quality-of-life thing.”
Comment from 28 Jan 2026 in “Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux” “perfectly cromulent minimum viable text editor”
Comment from 21 May 2026 in “BBEdit 16” Reliable and works well
“It's barely changed since NeXTSTEP and works flawlessly”
Comment from 11 Feb 2026 in “Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability” “Tested this now. Works like a bomb.”
Comment from 27 Apr 2026 in “Tim Cook Is Leaving. Good”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Buggy, freezes, copies wrong text
“cause of a bug where I'd highlight text, copy, and it's actually copy the wrong block”
Comment from 26 Feb 2026 in “Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown” “The bug froze TextEdit and I can no longer access Finder's top menu bar.”
Comment from 1 Oct 2026 in “macOS Golden Gate Is a Buggy Mess” “TextEdit has become a neglected buggy mess.”
Comment from 22 Oct 2026 in “A Markdown File Should Just Open” Confusing save and delete behavior
“A power user who is aware that they didn’t save would be confused, as there isn’t any file to delete.”
Comment from 21 Aug 2026 in “Yes/No/Cancel causes Aspirin sales to soar” “I magically quit the application hitting cancel when there was to save the document”
Comment from 11 Nov 2025 in “Scaling HNSWs” “"Delete" is the wrong verb, suggests I'm deleting the file, which I'm not.”
Comment from 21 Aug 2026 in “Yes/No/Cancel causes Aspirin sales to soar” Neglected, lacking, and missing features
“there's still no way to access any of the widgets up top”
Comment from 8 Jun 2026 in “Mouseless – keyboard-driven control of macOS/Linux/Windows” “keeps the built-in TextEdit at its crappy state”
Comment from 12 Aug 2026 in “Show HN: Write.md, a free, open-source, themeable Markdown editor for macOS” “I found TextEdit to be seriously lacking”
Comment from 8 Jul 2026 in “Show HN: MacPad – a tiny macOS Notepad.exe-style editor” - Comment from 25 Aug 2026 in “MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID”
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 | — |
| TextEditThis page | 15 | 11 | 58% | 8 | — | — |
What people said
23 of the 26 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“TextEdit has become a neglected buggy mess.”
“The bug froze TextEdit and I can no longer access Finder's top menu bar.”
“Literally every default is wrong.”
“A power user who is aware that they didn’t save would be confused, as there isn’t any file to delete.”
“"Delete" is the wrong verb, suggests I'm deleting the file, which I'm not.”
“There’s no ambiguity there.”
“keeps the built-in TextEdit at its crappy state”
“I found TextEdit to be seriously lacking”
“No it doesn't? format>font has bold, italic, underline, outline, super/subscript, and more?”
“the intended or unintended effect of being stripped down creates a lot of unexpected”
“there's still no way to access any of the widgets up top”
“perfectly cromulent minimum viable text editor”
“it's actually useful in plain-text mode”
“Tested this now. Works like a bomb.”
“applications such as TextEdit, Calculator, Safari, and other first and third party applications leaking like a sieve”
“Ok wysiwyg web editor is maybe overselling it. Still neat.”
“cause of a bug where I'd highlight text, copy, and it's actually copy the wrong block”
“It's barely changed since NeXTSTEP and works flawlessly”
“It's such a simple, little quality-of-life thing.”
“The textedit icon is a great example.”
“But not on System apps. So now any system app is twice without ability to easily 'diet' it”
“So it's now like TextEdit.app running in plaintext mode.”
“I magically quit the application hitting cancel when there was to save the document”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.