# TextMate

11 Hacker News commenters recommended TextMate and 1 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 7 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** A free, native, minimal Mac text editor that people still use daily and remember fondly, and which influenced later editors.

## Why people recommend it

- Still used as a daily driver (2 comments): "TM has multiple cursors where vim has none, and I use that every day." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47960295)) "Use TextMate[0] as my daily driver." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47610971))
- Influenced Sublime Text and VS Code (2 comments): "Textmate?. The Monaco editor predated vscode" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49826680)) "the thing that Sublime Text was inspired by" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47950569))
- Fondly remembered by longtime users (2 comments): "Hard to convey how hyped I was to use these." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48366161)) "I still have a soft spot for TextMate" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49788764))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Zed](https://hackerapproved.com/p/zed.md): 700 recommend
- [GNU Emacs](https://hackerapproved.com/p/emacs.md): 648 recommend
- [Vim](https://hackerapproved.com/p/vim.md): 513 recommend
- [Visual Studio Code](https://hackerapproved.com/p/visual-studio-code.md): 485 recommend
- [Neovim](https://hackerapproved.com/p/neovim.md): 295 recommend

## Cite as

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