BBEdit 13 is the one version I am NOT upgrading to. Use to be every two years, now just ONE year after my last purchase they want more money, and for very little. Grep playground? Not worth it. Better dark mode? I don't use dark mode. And in their "what's new" they even list something that was brought out in version 12 (the commands). And after all that embarrassing denial about the syntax colouring bug. No, no, no. Not this one.
So, after me pointing this out about 5 years ago - Certain edits within a "PHP in HTML" source file would set up a situation in which subsequent edits would cause syntax coloring to get confused - they now finally fixed it. Really a pity that it took so long for me to believed and the fault to be found and fixed. I have burnt my wallet too many times upgrading hoping that the next version fixes it so I will wait for others to confirm. I cannot afford to keep updating for a feature (actually, a fix) that never seems to work. I hope you have it right, finally.
I like this app but really can't find an excuse to shell out the good hunk of money this app costs, when excellent editors like VSCode or Atom are available for free, not to mention commercial alternatives like Sublime that also are multi-platform -- and also happens to have way lot more of features than BBEdit all of them. Please enlighten me.
Best editor for the Mac. It’s one of the apps that is permanently open and ready. I don’t use most of the features it has, but it’s reassuring to know it has so many for when I need them. It is well maintained.
I totally understand why the syntax colouring bug is frustrating but I don't understand how this could be the basis of so many super low review ratings. The team at BareBones clearly knock themselves out to constantly enhance and deepen BBEdit's abilities with plain text. (Now that I think about it, I don't think the syntax colouring but is still around or at least as bad as it once was.)
Have you seen the user manual? It's almost 400 pages... for a text editor! And that's not because it's overly verbose but because the ridiculous number of abilities BBEdit has to document. I'm sure I don't use more than... 15% of them and still find BBEdit essential. Yes, there are other editors that let you edit code, but there is very little with BBEdit's breadth and depth of features.
That all said, I'm only giving 4.5 stars because there's no way to get the Function menu to only show functions (not objects, etc.). Gotta keep you trying, guys! (See! *That* is how you rank something that's awesome except for your pet feature. :-) )
Been using BBEdit since day 1. It's not as super-fast as Atom or Sublime, but it's got eh absolut best simple automation functionality, great extensibiliyt, format detection, super huge file editing... can't live on a Mac without it.
I've been a BBEdit user since the very earliest versions and it is my one of my favorites. It's also one of the most powerful and comprehensive professional text editing tools around. Kudos to Bare Bones Software for their consistent, dedicated, responsive support of this wonderful product.
I was surprised to see all the negative reviews (I'm unfamiliar with the syntax coloring bug and haven't seen stability problems with 11 or 12)
I use several text editors, but overall I find BBEdit to be a great tool for working with large files or folders of files.
A few things I especially like:
- Finding All in a file or across files (and navigate results in a separate window)
- Extract matching text from file(s) -- literals or regular expressions
- Viewing/ / fixing obscure text encoding issues that choke other editors (the Zap Gremlins feature is sometimes handy)
- File / folder comparisons
- Include files (static or dynamic)
- Very customizable
Stay Away. Since they have been informed of the syntax coloring bug, they have release about 10 updates and 1 paid upgrade and still haven't even acknowledged it. They ignore my emails pointing it out, saying they cannot replicate it. Guess what barebones? The people here can all replicate it! And be aware that when this bug cripples your productivity and you request a refund, they begin ignoring all your emails. Caveat Emptor.
Another paid update with nothing much to show for it. The syntax colouring bug is still there! Oh dear, Bare Bones indeed!
Next they’ll go subscription. Next they’ll go under.
Another disappointing update that does not really bring a lot of new features I can use.
Ftp still sucks, now they added the ability to open folders by clicking on a little triangle, really, wow that is so modern, but guess what clicked on the triangle and nothing happens, this functionality is not working , using transmit as ftp is really basic since version 10 and do not use it anymore.
Syntax colouring still has the bug? What have they then been fixing?
No improvement with the clippings palette I was really hoping for.
Also suggested adding CSS lookup/editing similar to what brackets has, they said this is a good idea but has not been added. But then bracket is 240MB.
Guess we will have to update as we otherwise are stuck with know bugs, also do not see what this update is all about, guess it was time to charge for an update as they need to do this form time to time, which in itself is fair enough as they do keep the program working after system updates. Also had hopes to get at least get one exiting interphase improvement with a full version number, this is more like 11.5 then 12.
What a cheek! They refused the acknowledge the existence of the syntax coloring bug in v11, then they refused to accept it and now they release a new version without even addressing it - or fixing it!!!!! Time to leave this former stalwart behind. It is a pity, really but BareBones have done this to themselves.
Old 32bit Software, requires the use of the CMV-Compiler - reducing the power of all the system.
SublimeText is the much much better solution for me and it is cross platform.
Syntax coloring still not fixed. When I have a file open that uses PHP short tags, sooner or later the syntax coloring in BBEdit tanks. I have sent them thousands of examples and complaints. It worked in all versions before 11. They seem to be slipping in their skills. A real pity...
BBEdit has lasted an incredibly long time without falling into "money grab mode" - there is no subscription to buy, and they still offer a free mode, which is quite generous. The app itself is convenient and works well. This is an essential Mac program that can benefit almost everyone.
Been using for years. Most powerful text editor out there. Years ago I found a very odd bug when you had one monitor in landscape and the other in portrait mode. The developers were quick to respond with a solution that got put in the next update.
I used to love BBEdit. Given that I have been a user since v5 on classic OS, it is said that I now have such a bad taste in my mouth. Syntax coloring no longer works and I have shown this issue to the developers and how to replicate and it is consistent across several machines. This makes the product almost unusable. They have failed to address this or respond in any way that seems to indicate they have an idea. BBEdit over the years has gone from must-have to must-find-alternative.
Yay - once more Syntax Coloring is borked. Seems BBEdit nowadays fixes one thing then breaks three others. I give up... This used to be my favourite piece of Mac OS software but in recent times, I am finding it unusable because of these kinds of breaks.
Normally BBEdit is great, but the 11.6 update breaks the ability to see the URL of files edited from 3rd party FTP applications. Before I could see my FTP path URL at the top of the document window, but now I only seem to be able to see my local path to the temporary file, which is useless. Please fix that.
Also, the new shrunken / desaturated Navigation bar at the top is way too small for my eyes. It's ridiculous. Either bring back a taller more contrasting bar or provide a preference option to scale it back up.
Please. pretty please.
These are showstoppers for me. Reverted back to 11.5.2.
A great program that has been around forever with superb support and constant improvements. I use this daily for a variety of tasks ranging from coding to bulk file grep search/replace, and most any other task that pops up with text. There are so many other features I've never even used. Very powerful program.
BBEdit is an indispensable tool for me for some years now. I do like it, especially since version 11, as I find it solid rock stable since then. I prefer it over emacs or textmate (both also very good), I think just because BBEdit (or TextWrangler) was always on my Macs. I regularly use the sftp-option to edit documents, which I find very comfortable. Compared to all other software I have used over the years this text editor earns definitely 5 stars. Therefore, I recommend it to everyone who needs to edit text documents from different sources. A better Matlab integration would be nice.
"Document state storage no longer reads settings out of file resource forks, nor writes into them. If the UseResourceForkForDocumentState is turned on, the application will use extended file attributes for storing this information instead. (Any document settings stored in legacy resource forks will be ignored.)"
This is great, except for this part: "Any document settings stored in legacy resource forks will be ignored." So all my old files will loose their document settings?
To be honest I don't even take advantage of most of the features this app offers, but I used BBEdit Lite and TextWrangler for so long that I decided I should give something back to the developers by purchasing the full version. Keep up the great work!
This update takes yet again away certain things I liked and forces me yet again to change the way I work.
The clippings palette is now again one column but can no longer contain sets of clippings, just a long a-z list of them.
Which makes the palette pretty useless. I already sopped using the HTML and CSS platelets in previous versions. Customisable before and text only, now big, ugly and no longer customisable. You would assume it would make sense to keep things that work and have already been programmed instead of replacing them with a less functional version?
Also if you are in a mixed languages document (html file with some php and css) you sometimes cannot get the right clippings as the automatic selection of clipping sets based on languages does not always work. The ftp browser was way better in BBEdit 8. You could logout and onto a different site with a bookmark selection menu. Took just one quick section. This now takes 4 clicks additional to selecting the server. Less functional when they already had a much better version, why not just keep it? Have not used the BBEdit browser ever since, when I used it a lot before.
The html inline pop up ups introduced in BBEdit 10 still pretty useless and easier to just write the code. Before it really helped, now you have to retype everything again and again, a good example of it are the image tags. On screen with everything clearly visible and auto populated, then with the context style menus, retype every time, having to scroll teh menu, I seldom use this at all now.
All helping windows and functions that helped you learn html in the past are destroyed and no longer practical to use. Luckily I no longer have to learn how to write the code and knwo before hand what i want to write.
With every update I get frustrated and disappointed, version 11 has nothing really new or useful. You kind of have to update as older versions no longer work with previous operating systems.
Looked at Brakets, which has the inline editor that lets you automatically find associated styles in style sheets and edit them without having to open the style sheet, something BBEdit is still not doing.
But still using BBEdit, mainly due to these reasons. The clipping function are still the best, even without the, now useless palette, you get them as contextual menu suggestions when you type. The integration of Apple Script is still very helpful and has not be changed, probably only a matter of time before the programmers destroy them as well. Document compare is another functionality I use quiet often. This is now done in one window instead of two, which is nice but not a real big benefit, two windows worked in the same way and you still need an apple script to hide the palettes. Grep is luckily still there as well.
Version 11 has more syntax colouring, but otherwise nothing to get exited about or even justifying a whole version jump. But I guess the programmers need some money from time to time, as keeping up with system changes seem to be not an easy task.
BBEdit could be perfect if they would have improved the functionality instead of taking great things away and replacing them with far less functional solutions. Sometimes I wonder if the programmers actually use BBEdit on a daily bases, because if they did they would notice that many of the changes made are actually downgrades. But what can we do it is still the best text editor, or maybe I am just too used to it? I would probably switch if another editor had powerful clippings an similar applescript integration. But the I should not have to as BBEdit could be (as it use dot be until version 8) the best text editor on any platform.
Evidently, MacUpdate.com is now in VersionTracker.com mode in which they add popups and a host of other disgusting crap to every page and make you actively click them away one-by-one just to view whatever's underneath. Soon you'll have to give them your credit card number to pay for every page you view.
MACUPDATE, YOU SUCK.
Version 11 removed Tidy support. I use version 10's Tidy feature every day because when other Tidy apps fail, BBedit's Tidy didn't. I would have left a 5 star rating, but this is a deal-breaker for me and I don't think v11 is worth the upgrade price.
I've been using jEdit for years and have been wondering whether trying another editor was worth the time investment. Has anyone used/compared BBEdit (or any other editor) with jEdit? If so, would you mind sharing your thoughts/opinions?
Cheers.
It's the most powerful and hence best text editor in the entire galaxy! I have been using it for many years, mainly for HTML coding, but also to cleanup texts. No other application has such powerful search and replace options. It's capable of even much more than I need or know!
Update still fails with "unable to move BBEdit.app to trash"...however by recursively setting the app to 777 the update ran fine. Is India handling your updates? ;)
I still like BBEdit, but after many years of use I'm switching to Sublime Text. The killer features in ST for me are:
- ST shows code errors as you type (with the SublimeLinter package). This is invaluable, especially for interpreted languages.
- ST has outstanding type-to-open-a-file. Unlike BBEdit, the dialog comes up quickly and the search algorithm is excellent (it favors the first letters of camelCase and underscore-separated words and filters out useless files).
- ST also has outstanding search for symbols in a project. (BBEdit also has support for this, but it's not fully automatic and I've never used it.)
- ST has very powerful multiple selection support.
That said, BBEdit has much better support and much better diff (even with plugins ST cannot match it). And both are excellent, extensible editors with powerful project support.
I hope the BBEdit team can add some missing features and speed up the program (especially startup and building the index for Open File by Name…; with a large project that can hang the program for a long time). I fear it is really falling behind state of the art.
BBEdit is a very solid and feature rich text editor but my standard editor is TextMate2. Why? It is much easier to find your way around. BBEdit is missing some important core features like an easy way to duplicate a file! Those features are the ones I need on a daily basis and makes my coding life easier. So, while BBEdit shines in many aspects it lacks some fundamental features.
Sure, there is Sublime Text 2, which is a totally new generation of text editors. But since I'm on a Mac (that's 20 years) I have always used BBEdit and BBEdit Lite (what is now the free and mighty good TextWrangler). It would be a bad advice for Bare Bones to change BBEdit radically. I like the slow and steady evolution. And BBEdit is a cosmic constant in a software universe of a lot of meteors. Like the very nice TextMate: the author cashed in a lot of money for his program (no envy, just a fact), and now programmers are waiting since ages for TextMate 2.0.
I went to "Check for Updates" in the menu in my BBEdit, and there were NONE! Then I remembered I'm still using BBEdit 9 (once a month vs everyday just a few years ago?) without any issues and then a few reasons I didn't switch to v.10…
I could say "come on, release a really improved, modern version of the app and I'll upgrade right away", but I think this company is out of juice and/or willpower for innovation, so I'll just keep using my v.9 and, well, won't really care if the company is still around or not with their non-products.
From the 10.5.6 update notes:
"Application startup performance has been significantly improved. Anyone who has complained that BBEdit is slow to launch is going to have to find something else to complain about."
I can confirm seeing a massive improvement in BBEdit launch time. Now I don't forget what I wanted to write by the time it loads. Definitely worth the new(ish) lower price.
Another update without new features. I don't know what to say. Bare Bones, do you really think BBEdit is perfect ?
It has been two years since last time I wrote comments about BBEdit 10. Two years, and we're still missing critical features like more comprehensive syntax color, two column editing, Git integration, JavaDoc/PHPDoc integration, smooth ctags integration, standard library auto-completion, online syntax linter, user-define build system, and project-based settings.
Bare Bones, if your calendar is out of sync, it's 2013 now. The world is evolving. We have better tool for HTML/CSS like Coda2; we have better tool for Ruby like TextMate; we have better tool for PHP/Python like Komodo; we have better tool for markup text like Markdown; and we have the all-mighty Sublime Text 2.
Bare Bones, It's time for an upgrade. Either you upgrade your flagship product, or the users would upgrade to another tool with better workflow.
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Read 205 BBEdit User Reviews
Have you seen the user manual? It's almost 400 pages... for a text editor! And that's not because it's overly verbose but because the ridiculous number of abilities BBEdit has to document. I'm sure I don't use more than... 15% of them and still find BBEdit essential. Yes, there are other editors that let you edit code, but there is very little with BBEdit's breadth and depth of features.
That all said, I'm only giving 4.5 stars because there's no way to get the Function menu to only show functions (not objects, etc.). Gotta keep you trying, guys! (See! *That* is how you rank something that's awesome except for your pet feature. :-) )