Bare Bones Software has released BBEdit 16, a significant update to its veteran Mac text editor. The upgrade is free for licensed BBEdit 15 customers who purchased on or after November 1, 2025, while others pay US$29.99 or US$39.99. This release introduces more than a hundred new features, changes, and refinements, focusing on both user-facing tools and foundational performance work.

Notable new capabilities include expanded Shortcuts support with App Intents, allowing powerful text transformations in external workflows. A headline feature is the ability to search for text within images across multiple files, even using grep. Users can now customize color schemes per-project and per-Notebook, and AI Chat Worksheets see improved response times with streaming results.

Technically, BBEdit 16 integrates the W3C HTML5 syntax checker, adds basic vi keyboard emulation, and improves built-in Git support. SFTP file transfers receive throughput boosts, and numerous internal optimizations yield palpable speed gains across features. This update solidifies BBEdit's position as a robust, professional tool for developers and writers, balancing innovative additions with its core philosophy of reliability and depth.