TextMate 2 – a text editor for macOS

TextMate

13 years ago, someone recommended TextMate to me. I wanted to give something back, but the developers of TextMate don’t accept donations at the time being, so instead of donating, I decided to recommend TextMate to you today. 🙂

It doesn’t replace an IDE, but it is and has been a very useful and powerful addition.

I use Textmate for many tasks outside of a projects scope.

So what do I use it for? And how does it help me in every-day programming?

  • I use it to review small or large text formats (such as CSV, Readmes, etc)
  • Doing complex Search & Replace tasks with Regular Expressions.
  • Quick transformations of lists into arrays and vice versa.
  • Quick transformations of lists SQL statements and vice versa.
  • Fast formatting of otherwise unreadable or minified files such as unformatted JSON or XML files. It’s as quick as pasting code, choosing the format in status bar, and hitting Tidy/Reformat.
  • In order to browse through directories, one can simply drop the folder directly on the TextMate icon and it opens with directory browser.
  • Diff creation and file comparison. (Cog icon -> Diff -> Compare with…)
  • Whenever my IDE of choice chokes opening (and especially syntax-highlighting) large files above a 100 MB, I usually switch to Textmate because it’s a great little allrounder and can handle large files, too.

Download TextMate 2.x for free over at https://macromates.com.