TextMate
Hacker ApprovedShares rank 31 of 56 text editors by recommenders
A free, native, minimal Mac text editor that people still use daily and remember fondly, and which influenced later editors.
A free, native, minimal Mac text editor that people still use daily and remember fondly, and which influenced later editors.
12 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 11
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 92%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not 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 carries the badge
- 11 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 11 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 7 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
Still used as a daily driver
“TM has multiple cursors where vim has none, and I use that every day.”
Comment from 30 Apr 2026 in “Zed is 1.0” “Use TextMate[0] as my daily driver.”
Comment from 2 Apr 2026 in “Ask HN: What dev tools do you rely on that nobody talks about?” Influenced Sublime Text and VS Code
“Textmate?. The Monaco editor predated vscode”
Comment from 24 Sep 2026 in “VSCode's SSH Agent Is Bananas (2025)” “the thing that Sublime Text was inspired by”
Comment from 29 Apr 2026 in “Zed is 1.0” Fondly remembered by longtime users
“Hard to convey how hyped I was to use these.”
Comment from 2 Jun 2026 in “macOS Needs Its Grid Back” “I still have a soft spot for TextMate”
Comment from 21 Sep 2026 in “Sublime Text Build 4213”
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 | — |
| TextMateThis page | 11 | 1 | 92% | 7 | — | Approved |
What people said
10 of the 13 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Textmate?. The Monaco editor predated vscode”
“I still have a soft spot for TextMate”
“Hard to convey how hyped I was to use these.”
“TM has multiple cursors where vim has none, and I use that every day.”
“the thing that Sublime Text was inspired by”
“Use TextMate[0] as my daily driver.”
“Textmate is doing JUST FINE”
“that's not just dead but decayed at this point”
“Just a reliable, minimal, fully native (no electron, etc) editor that is flexible enough to keep adding new bundles to.”
“all did particular things very well”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.