12 Best Code Editors for Mac and Windows for Editing WordPress Files

We often get asked about what’s the best code editor for modifying WordPress files? Well you can use any plain text editor such as NotePad, however there are better editors out there with features like syntax highlighting, advanced find and replace, FTP integration, etc. In this article, we will show you some of the best code editors available for Mac and Windows users.

1. Notepad++

Notepad++ is a free and open source code editor for Windows. It is easy to use for beginners and highly powerful for advanced users. It comes with syntax highlighting for many languages including PHP, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. It also comes with a built-in FTP plugin that allows you to connect to your server and edit files directly without leaving the editor.

2. TextWrangler

TextWrangler came out of the popular BBEdit text editor. This powerful and feature rich text editor is a freeware. It comes with a very intuitive user interface that makes it super easy to browse files and work on projects. It has advanced search and replace tools, and it can directly edit and save files to FTP, SFTP servers. It offers syntax highlighting for many programing languages, fully supports utf-8, and even allows you to convert character encoding of text documents.

3. Coda

Coda is perhaps one of the most loved web development and programming editor for Mac. It is famous for its ridiculously good looking interface, and smart powerful features. It allows you to edit local or remote files, manage projects, work on multiple files at once with easy switching between tabs. It has built in terminal, debugger, web kit preview and inspector, and so many awesome features.

Code costs $99 for a single license but it is totally worth the price.

4. Sublime Text

Sublime Text is a cross-platform code editor for Mac, Windows, and Linux. It comes with all the features you would expect from a powerful code editor and then some more. It looks beautiful and you can tweak the appearance to make it more comfortable for you. Sublime Text comes with advanced code editor features which allow you to autofill, autocomplete, reference function in a file, multiple selection, split editing, and many more.

Sublime Text is available on trial and a single license will cost you $70.

5. TextMate

TextMate promises to bring Apple’s approach to operating systems into a text editor. TextMate is a simple yet feature rich code editor for Mac. Easy clip board management, sophisticated find and replace, autocompletion, foldable code blocks, are some of the powerful features of TextMate.

TextMate is available for $60. It is also available as a free download.

6. Atom

Atom is a cross-platform code editor created by developers for developers. It is open source, and much like WordPress, Atom users can submit packages and themes for the software. It looks pretty and you can change the appearance by installing themes. It comes with built-in package manager to extend it, smart autocompletion, file system browser, multiple panes, find and replace.

7. BBEdit

BBEdit is a beautiful code and HTML editor for Mac. It comes with all the advanced features of a powerful code editor. Syntax highlighting, advanced find and replace, autocompletion, quick lookup, multiple tabs, splittable editing windows and much more.

BBEdit costs $49.99, you can also download a free trial version.

8. UltraEdit

UltraEdit is a powerful HTML and Code editor available for Mac, Windows, and Linux. It comes with a built-in file comparison utility, autocompletion, advanced layout, multi-tab, multi-pane editors, and syntax highlighting for the most popular programming languages.

UltraEdit costs $79.5 with a limited free trial version available for download.

9. Vim

Vim is an advanced text editor that brings the power of Vi to an equally powerful feature set. Vim is open source and available for Mac, Windows, and Linux. Vim is so powerful and advanced that it is considered to be an IDE in its own way.

10. Brackets

Brackets was founded by Adobe to push web editors into the new age. It claims to be an advanced code editor that understands web designs. Brackets can take hints from a PSD file and allows you to write code faster and better. Brackets is open source and available for Mac, Windows, and Linux.

11. CoffeeCup HTML Editor

CoffeeCup HTML Editor is an easy to use HTML editor for Windows. It supports PHP, HTML, Markdown, CSS and allows you to use autocomplete, syntax validation, semantic code, among many other features. CoffeeCup HTML editor is not the ideal code editor for many other languages but if you want to learn writing PHP, HTML, and CSS, then Coffee Cup HTML editor is a good place to start.

CoffeeCup HTML Editor costs $69 with a limited free trial version available for download.

12. Espresso

Espresso is a web development tool for Mac. It comes with a powerful code editor and built-in CSSEdit. It comes with beautiful interface and advanced features like drag and drop code snippets, code folding, navigator, live styling and X-ray preview.

Espresso is available for $75.

We hope this article helped you find the perfect code editor for your needs. You may also want to take a look at our WordPress theme cheat sheet for beginners

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