Best Text Editors in Canada

(Koi Editor is now Peeknext) Peeknext is a professional text and code editor for macOS, built around three principles: fast, local, and scriptable. Designed for low-latency editing and large-file performance, Peeknext includes multi-cursor editing, synchronized views, project-wide search, context-aware autocomplete, syntax highlighting for 30+ languages, code folding, file outlines, customizable themes and keybindings, and extensive editing commands. Peeknext requires no account, includes no telemetry, and works entirely offline. Configuration and keybindings use plain text files, while custom editor commands can be written in Python. Optional AI features connect to local models through Ollama for code completion and inline assistance. Built for Apple Silicon Macs, Peeknext combines a high-performance editing core with native macOS integration.

Visual Studio Code (VS Code) is Microsoft’s open-source AI code editor designed to make coding faster, smarter, and more collaborative. It supports thousands of extensions and nearly every programming language, offering developers a lightweight yet powerful environment for writing, testing, and debugging code. With AI-powered features like GitHub Copilot, Next Edit Suggestions, and Agent Mode, VS Code helps you code with precision, automate complex tasks, and streamline development workflows. It integrates seamlessly with cloud services, remote repositories, and tools like Git, Docker, and Azure. The editor is fully customizable, allowing you to personalize your layout, color themes, and keyboard shortcuts. Whether coding locally or in the browser, VS Code delivers a complete development experience for individuals and teams alike.

IntelliJ IDEA is a professional-grade integrated development environment (IDE) primarily designed for Java and Kotlin development. It helps developers write code faster by automating routine tasks and providing smart coding assistance. The IDE supports the full software development lifecycle, from design and coding to testing and deployment. IntelliJ IDEA stays up to date with the latest language features, such as full support for Java 24 and Kotlin K2 mode. It offers a smooth and enjoyable workflow that helps developers stay focused and productive. The platform also emphasizes data privacy and security, complying with industry standards like SOC 2.

A sophisticated text editor for code, markup and prose. Use Goto Anything to open files with only a few keystrokes, and instantly jump to symbols, lines or words. Make ten changes at the same time, not one change ten times. Multiple selections allow you to interactively change many lines at once, rename variables with ease, and manipulate files faster than ever. The Command Palette holds infrequently used functionality, like sorting, changing the syntax and changing the indentation settings. With just a few keystrokes, you can search for what you want, without ever having to navigate through the menus or remember obscure key bindings. Sublime Text has a powerful, Python API that allows plugins to augment built-in functionality. Package Control can be installed via the command palette, providing simple access to thousands of packages built by the community.

Atom is a hackable text editor for the 21st century, built on Electron, and based on everything we love about our favorite editors. We designed it to be deeply customizable, but still approachable using the default configuration. A text editor is at the core of a developer’s toolbox, but it doesn't usually work alone. Work with Git and GitHub directly from Atom with the GitHub package. Create new branches, stage and commit, push and pull, resolve merge conflicts, view pull requests and more—all from within your editor. The GitHub package is already bundled with Atom, so you're ready to go! Atom works across operating systems. Use it on OS X, Windows, or Linux. Search for and install new packages or create your own right from Atom. Atom helps you write code faster with a smart and flexible autocomplete. Easily browse and open a single file, a whole project, or multiple projects in one window.

UltraEdit is a text and code editor built for work that general-purpose editors often struggle with: large files, complex data manipulation, and security-sensitive workflows. It has been in the market for more than 30 years, is used by over 4 million users worldwide, and is trusted by enterprise customers across the Fortune 100, 500, and 1000. Individual users choose UltraEdit when everyday editors start to hit their limits. Common use cases include working with very large files, running advanced search and replace, using column and block editing, and handling more complex text and data manipulation. Organizations choose UltraEdit when they need a more secure and supportable editor behind sensitive workflows. That includes teams in banking, insurance, healthcare, government, and other regulated or risk-sensitive environments where unsupported tools can create too much uncertainty.

The leading professional HTML and text editor for the Mac, with high-performance features for editing, searching, and manipulation of text.

Code::Blocks is a free, open-source, cross-platform Integrated Development Environment (IDE) primarily designed for C, C++, and Fortran development. Known for its lightweight design and modular structure, Code::Blocks offers a highly customizable interface with support for multiple compilers, including GCC, Clang, and Microsoft Visual C++. It features an intuitive, user-friendly interface with essential tools like syntax highlighting, code folding, auto-completion, and a robust debugging environment with breakpoints, variable inspection, and call stack tracing. Code::Blocks is highly extensible through plugins, enabling developers to add features like version control, scripting support, and custom build tools. Its lightweight nature, flexibility, and cross-platform compatibility make it a popular choice for students, educators, and developers working on small to medium-sized C/C++ projects.

Code faster with the IDE for today’s web languages – Python, PHP, Perl, Golang, Ruby and more.

A true cross-platform, multi-language code editor, with support for over 60 languages on 9 platforms. Build or compile your project, then double-click on an error message in the Build window to jump to that location. Errors and warnings are marked with an icon in the left margin. In addition, the overview bar, positioned alongside the vertical scrollbar, marks the position of errors and warnings relative to the current scroll position in the document. To quickly scroll a marked location into view, you can drag the scrollbar slider to the mark, or click on the mark itself. SlickEdit's integrated debugging provides a convenient and easy to use front-end for many debuggers. Set breakpoints, step, inspect the stack, view variables/members - all the features you expect from a debugger. SlickEdit supports debugging for: GNU C/C++, Java, WinDbg, Clang C/C++ LLDB, Google Go, Python, Perl, Ruby, PHP, XCode, Scala, C# using Mono, Visual Basic using Mono, and Android JVM/NDK.

gedit is the text editor of the GNOME desktop environment. The first goal of gedit is to be easy to use, with a simple interface by default. More advanced features are available by enabling plugins. A flexible plugin system which can be used to dynamically add new advanced features.

Bluefish is a powerful editor targeted towards programmers and web developers, with many options to write websites, scripts and programming code. Bluefish supports many programming and markup languages. See features for an extensive overview, take a look at the screenshots, or download it right away. Bluefish is an open-source development project, released under the GNU GPL license. Bluefish is a multi-platform application that runs on most desktop operating systems including Linux, FreeBSD, MacOS-X, Windows, OpenBSD and Solaris. Bluefish 2.2.12 is a minor maintenance release with some minor new features. Most important is a fix for a crash in a simple search. Python 3 compatibility has been further improved. Encoding detection in python files has been improved. Triple-click now selects the line. On Mac OSX Bluefish deals better with the new permission features. Also using the correct language in the Bluefish user interface is fixed for certain languages on OSX.