TextMate

Category

Description of App

TextMate brings Apple's approach to operating systems into the world of text editors. By bridging UNIX underpinnings and GUI, TextMate cherry-picks the best of both worlds to the benefit of expert scripters and novice users alike. (MacroMates.com Home Page)

TextMate is a simple yet robust text editor that supports a vast array of languages from simple plain text to HTML to ObjectiveC. An application that supports the SVN and Git repositories and supports bundling so you can add your own or other support for other languages or modified languages.

It has the usual set of features like other development tools such as syntax highlighting, auto-correction and code hinting and also has themes so you can style the highlighting the way you want.
Very lightweight and extremely robust.

Version

1.5 & 2.0 Alpha

Free or Paid

Paid

Version Of macOS App Was Tested On

2.0 alpha build 9561

Accessibility Comments

Absolutely flawless using VoiceOver. Everything is labelled correctly and very easy to navigate. I was in contact with MacroMates concerning accessibility and they added a feature that I requested, I know most of you here are totally blind, but having the caret tracking work in the latest build of TextMate was a great help for me and I imagine for many other partially sighted and Mac Zoom users.

Usability

The app is fully accessible with VoiceOver and is easy to navigate and use.

Other Comments

I have not tested every single feature of the program as of yet with VoiceOver. For example, I keep code hints turned off, but I'm certain they work with VoiceOver too if you like having them turned on. I am happy to help anybody looking to use this application get comfortable with it, though I sincerely doubt you'll need any help, it works straight out of the box.

Developer's Twitter Username
macromates

Recommendations

3 people have recommended this app

Most recently recommended by rareBlackMagic 3 years 9 months ago

Options

Comments

By splyt on Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - 13:53

Does it support code completion?

If so it will be a breaking app for Mac, cinse eclipse does fail miserably and xcode hhas troubles with it. For those who ains to learn fast a\nd have no time / memory / patience to stop and look for sintax of classes / objects / functions all the time in other windows it would be really good.

By rareBlackMagic on Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - 13:53

Yes, it supports code completion and all other popular features of the major IDEs out there. You can download it for a trial period, I honestly suggest giving it a go - it's also very customisable in Preferences and also using the configuration files if you're comfortable doing so (I personally haven't tried using the configuration files yet as it works perfectly out of the box for me).

By Andy B. on Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - 13:53

I want to make a note that V1.5.* requires the user to purchase the app. Starting with V2, the app is open source, and no longer requires purchase.

By splyt on Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - 13:53

is V2 accessible?

Is it possible to use this editor to manage xcode stuff using IB to design the interface and this editor to code stuff?

Marlon

By Andy B. on Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - 13:53

In reply to by splyt

V2 is completely accessible. I used it for my university level web design class. From what it looks like, it supports over 20 or more programming languages.

By rareBlackMagic on Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - 13:53

In reply to by splyt

Yes, v2.0 is accessible. I don't know what you mean by IB, but it does support ObjectiveC and Cocoa and there are a good number of OSX/iOS developers out there who use TM2 in conjunction or without Xcode.

By splyt on Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - 13:53

HMM ... IB stands for interface builder and is a common term used by the Apple dev folks.
I wounder if it will support swift, but will definitly look at this. Good to know that although xcode itself does not work well with VO and code completion another editor does.

Marlon

By Bryan Jones on Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - 13:53

Does anyone know how to convince VO to speak line numbers while editing HTML in Textmate version 2?

I've toggled "Show Line Numbers," tried different levels of VO verbosity & punctuation, but haven't had any luck. Aside from that, I've found everything else to be VO-accessible in this app.

2013 MBA, OS 10.9.4, TextMate version 2.0-alpha.9561

I haven't actually checked this - but that's because I dont' like line numbers being read out. I'll have a test myself, if not, I'll see if the devs can come up with something for this - that's if neither I nor someone else can figure out how to ge the line numbers read aloud with VO on it's own.

It doesn't have an interface builder as far as I know. again, it's a text editor, not an IDE, and I don't do Apple dev stuff so I wouldn't really know just how much TM can do in that regards.
If TM2's latest nightly build has no support for Swift, I'm pretty sure people are working on it already to get a bundle built to support it.

As Andy B said earlier, it is free to download and use - I think paying for TextMate is optional, I personally paid for it both because I've been using it since before 2.0 and I think the guys deserve the cash, as I use this app for all my code.

You can find out what line number you are on by stopping interaction with the text editor, then pressing right arrow until you hear something like, "Line number, 40. line number popup button." Then press left arrow until you reach the text editor and interacting with it again. You will pick up in your code where you last left off.

Go to the repo, grab a copy of the source, then start adding Swift. Send the patch back to the debs, and they will decide if it will work in the current build.

By splyt on Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - 13:53

Not really.

Asking if a resource is available does not mean ingratitude. Sure I could add it myself if desired but I have not time or resources available to do it. Others might have it and this is the reazon why I have asked. Asking for information on open source stuff is only what it is: asking for information. If they have it good, if they don't have it's also good .
Same thing when asking for accessibility: ideally, if you want accessibility on an open source inaccessible software go and make it your self. Even so, try to implement acessibility in say qt stuff on windows. Or try to negotiate and talk to everyone to make sure accwessibility will not be broken in the next gnome version .... what every single dev will say? If you want it fixed go and fix it by your self?
Therefore, asking if something open source is accessible is not a crime, nor should it be asking if open source software has any other feature already implemented on it.

By splyt on Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - 13:53

The idea was use IB to byuild the interface and text mate to edit code needed to make the interface run.
I have seen this kind of stuff happen with other technology including with implementations of .net on mac * you use IB in xcode to make the interface and other editors to write the code.

By Bryan Jones on Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - 13:53

Thanks Craig & Andy for your replies. After poking around a bit, I was able to determine that the current version of Textmate is compatible with the VoiceOver command to describe the item in the VoiceOver cursor," VO+F3, and this works to announce the line number and some other verbiage as Andy mentioned in his post, but without needing to stop interacting first.
2013 MBA, OS 10.9.4, TextMate version 2.0-alpha.9561

By Bryan Jones on Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - 13:53

Andy - Thanks for asking this question. Looks like the VO+F3 command only recognizes visible lines. I just tried "folding all levels" in an 18 line HTML file and VO+F3 then announced the actual line 18 as "line 5."

By Thomas Byskov … on Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - 13:53

Hi!

I tried to use the program as a replacement for Tincta. Here are my few notes:
1. TM is great if you are using texteditors all over the world. It can guess correct text encodings, and that is very nice for me and my workflows.

But with every good comes some bad news:
2. I had to go back to Textedit for one simple reason:
TM is not good if you are trying to spellcheck a document! Since it should use the OS X spellchecker, but something went wrong somewhere.
When I did an important paper a few months back, I tried to use the spellchecker in TM. You have to use the command kolon, you can not use the command and semicolon. At least I couldn't get it to work. What it does is that it finds the first word, and then focus can not be moved if you use command semicolon.
When using the other method (commando colon) you will see at least something if any word is found... But if spellcheck is your thing: Use any other tool than TM!
So if you are looking for a good texteditor and want to remove your typos TM is at this stage not for you. I learnt this the hard way.
This was tested with: version 2.0-beta.8.1.

Best regards Thomas

By Thomas Byskov … on Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - 13:53

Hi again!

A few days ago the folks behind Textmate made a new build that fixed my issues regarding spellcheck. At least it looks like it works better than it did previously, so my comment from earlier might no longer be as valid.
Best regards Thomas

By Jim Homme on Saturday, September 23, 2017 - 13:53

Upoing going to the website, I saw a download link and a buy link.

By Basia F on Saturday, September 23, 2017 - 13:53

I am not sure about SWIFT, but I believe it is supported. And the editor works fine with me. As for the last question, click Download. You will get the most recent build.
Cheers.

By TheBllindGuy07 on Thursday, May 23, 2024 - 13:53

At least I encountered this personally.
I guess it's more due to voiceover weirdness than textmate itself. But as of macos 14.4 (first use of textmate for me), when you navigate within indentation levels, voiceover will randomly announce either the content of the next line of where the cursor is when going from left to right, and the line above when going from right to left in these indentation levels. For me, as I do python this makes the app not accessible enough for code editing so I favor vscode to it despite I lose the native interface. Hopefully apple randomly correct this soon, or whoever is responsible for this at the end of the day.