For 34 years BBEdit has been a staple on the Mac, a plain text editor that has earned a devoted following. Unlike most legacy apps, it remains actively developed and beloved, even carrying the tagline “It doesn’t suck.”

Its focus is simple: no mind‑mapping tools, no image editors, just text. That focus makes it fast, responsive, and packed with powerful features such as grep, regular‑expression search, and automatic matching brackets and quotes. The editor can even wrap text or stay unwrapped, suiting coders who prefer long lines.

Bare Bones Software released the first version in 1989, and after the 1992 BBEdit name it has evolved for programmers, web authors, scientists and writers alike. Rich Siegel, the developer, says the app is written with itself, and the latest 16 version boasts millions of refinements.

Design simplicity extends to document handling: open a new file with Cmd‑N and all your previous work stays in a navigation bar. You can keep everything in memory or export to separate .txt files. For programmers the auto‑inserted closing brackets and quotes prevent syntax errors, while writers enjoy Markdown support and a split‑screen view.