{"slug": "bbedit", "name": "BBEdit", "category": "editors", "category_name": "Editors and IDEs", "description": "", "recommenders": 4, "commenters": 7, "warners": 0, "score": 4.554, "rising": 0.02, "first": "2026-04-22", "latest": "2026-10-07", "why": "BBEdit's still pretty great. I love, love, LOVE that I can extend it with shell scripts or Python tools or Rust apps", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 4, "neutral": 4, "compare": 0, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "BBEdit's still pretty great. I love, love, LOVE that I can extend it with shell scripts or Python tools or Rust apps", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["BBEdit"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 797988387, "item_id": 49874274, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49874274", "by": "librasteve", "date": "2026-09-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "look at a product like BBEdit and adopt their freemium model", "excerpt": "ok \u2026 I\u2019ll play ball. I really like your idea and the demo is very convincing. I already use Apple Notes as my daily driver over Obsidian, Bear and the others because I do not want to pay $$ per month just to sync notes between iPhone and Mac. However, I would much prefer a native md option over whatever proprietary rtf stuff that Notes does. So I am your perfect target user. Show me a well designed md centric notes t", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Building a Markdown editor for Mac, iOS and web"}, {"id": 775944336, "item_id": 48496521, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48496521", "by": "mac3n", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "been using this since System 7.\n\nStill doesn't suck.", "excerpt": "been using this since System 7. Still doesn't suck.", "context": "long-time Mac user", "use_case": "text editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What software feels exceptionally polished?"}, {"id": 771726336, "item_id": 48232896, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48232896", "by": "f30e3dfed1c9", "date": "2026-05-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use BBEdit all day every day", "excerpt": "\"Added a command to the View menu: 'Gather Untitled Documents'. This will collect all untitled (never saved) documents into the active window, removing them from other windows (and possibly closing those windows in the process).\" Honestly, this alone might be worth the upgrade price. I use BBEdit all day every day, and untitled docs tend to proliferate. I use the scratchpad a lot but still end up with lots of untitle", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "BBEdit 16"}, {"id": 771643456, "item_id": 48227716, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48227716", "by": "kstrauser", "date": "2026-05-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "BBEdit's still pretty great. I love, love, LOVE that I can extend it with shell scripts or Python tools or Rust apps", "excerpt": "I use Zed more now, but BBEdit's still pretty great. I love, love, LOVE that I can extend it with shell scripts or Python tools or Rust apps or whatever else I have laying around. Sometimes I don't want to write a whole plugin, let alone in JavaScript or whatever. I just want to say \"process this text with this tool\" and have it work. BBEdit's second to none for that.", "context": "", "use_case": "text processing with external tools", "switched_from": "", "story": "BBEdit 16"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [{"by": "ben_w", "context": "limits main device to trusted software", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49990271", "date": "2026-10-07"}, {"by": "mac3n", "context": "long-time Mac user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48496521", "date": "2026-06-11"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["text editing", "trusted text editor", "daily driver editor", "text editor", "text transformation", "text processing with external tools"], "compared": [{"slug": "neovim", "name": "Neovim", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 2}, {"slug": "neovide", "name": "Neovide", "co": 1, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "obsidian", "name": "Obsidian", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "sublime-text", "name": "Sublime Text", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "zed", "name": "Zed", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "emacs", "name": "Emacs", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48226944", "title": "BBEdit 16", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49990079", "title": "Ask HN: How do you check desktop apps for malicious code?", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49866597", "title": "Show HN: Building a Markdown editor for Mac, iOS and web", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49602490", "title": "Emacs Bedrock 2.0", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48486225", "title": "Ask HN: What software feels exceptionally polished?", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47866750", "title": "Parallel Agents in Zed", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-05": {"recommend": 2, "neutral": 1}, "2026-06": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 799844336, "item_id": 49990271, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49990271", "by": "ben_w", "date": "2026-10-07", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "a few well-known brands like BBEdit", "excerpt": "For me, my main device is limited to (somewhat) trusted software: MacOS, Chrome, a few well-known brands like BBEdit. All the \"fun\" (untrusted) stuff on that machine is behind the sandboxing of a browser and the OS itself. Anything that needs local permission is on a separate laptop which is only got one account: Claude. Not even signed in to Apple (nor any browser) on that, despite it being a Mac.", "context": "limits main device to trusted software", "use_case": "trusted text editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: How do you check desktop apps for malicious code?"}, {"id": 797988387, "item_id": 49874274, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49874274", "by": "librasteve", "date": "2026-09-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "look at a product like BBEdit and adopt their freemium model", "excerpt": "ok \u2026 I\u2019ll play ball. I really like your idea and the demo is very convincing. I already use Apple Notes as my daily driver over Obsidian, Bear and the others because I do not want to pay $$ per month just to sync notes between iPhone and Mac. However, I would much prefer a native md option over whatever proprietary rtf stuff that Notes does. So I am your perfect target user. Show me a well designed md centric notes t", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Building a Markdown editor for Mac, iOS and web"}, {"id": 793721120, "item_id": 49607570, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49607570", "by": "nxobject", "date": "2026-09-08", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I alternate between BBEdit and Emacs as my daily driver", "excerpt": "Well, I guess I'm at that point in my two-year cycle where I alternate between BBEdit and Emacs as my daily driver...", "context": "", "use_case": "daily driver editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Bedrock 2.0"}, {"id": 775944336, "item_id": 48496521, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48496521", "by": "mac3n", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "been using this since System 7.\n\nStill doesn't suck.", "excerpt": "been using this since System 7. Still doesn't suck.", "context": "long-time Mac user", "use_case": "text editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What software feels exceptionally polished?"}, {"id": 771726336, "item_id": 48232896, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48232896", "by": "f30e3dfed1c9", "date": "2026-05-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use BBEdit all day every day", "excerpt": "\"Added a command to the View menu: 'Gather Untitled Documents'. This will collect all untitled (never saved) documents into the active window, removing them from other windows (and possibly closing those windows in the process).\" Honestly, this alone might be worth the upgrade price. I use BBEdit all day every day, and untitled docs tend to proliferate. I use the scratchpad a lot but still end up with lots of untitle", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "BBEdit 16"}, {"id": 771647936, "item_id": 48227996, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48227996", "by": "submeta", "date": "2026-05-21", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Happily paid for every update for years, even when I used Emacs, I kept BBedit in reach.", "excerpt": "BBEdit used to be my text-transformation tool. Happily paid for every update for years, even when I used Emacs, I kept BBedit in reach. For quick text edits/transformations (because Regex in Emacs is hard to use). But with LLMs + nvim I hardly start bbedit anymore. So now with LLMs, I tell them what I need and they write a shell/Perl/Python script to make the craziest transformations.", "context": "", "use_case": "text transformation", "switched_from": "", "story": "BBEdit 16"}, {"id": 771643456, "item_id": 48227716, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48227716", "by": "kstrauser", "date": "2026-05-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "BBEdit's still pretty great. I love, love, LOVE that I can extend it with shell scripts or Python tools or Rust apps", "excerpt": "I use Zed more now, but BBEdit's still pretty great. I love, love, LOVE that I can extend it with shell scripts or Python tools or Rust apps or whatever else I have laying around. Sometimes I don't want to write a whole plugin, let alone in JavaScript or whatever. I just want to say \"process this text with this tool\" and have it work. BBEdit's second to none for that.", "context": "", "use_case": "text processing with external tools", "switched_from": "", "story": "BBEdit 16"}, {"id": 765893620, "item_id": 47868351, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47868351", "by": "submeta", "date": "2026-04-22", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I also replaced BBEdit by installing Neovide", "excerpt": "Is this any different to a setup where I use a terminal with tabs and splits and run my favourite editor in one or more panes and several agents (Claude Code and Codex) in several other panes and tabs? Edit: Although I can integrate an agent in NeoVim, I don\u2019t do it. I want to use my editor for just that, and the rest (versioning, agentic coding, git client, etc) in the terminal. My neovim setup is simple and fast, a", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Parallel Agents in Zed"}]}