We’ve all used TextEdit before and though it’s a nice text editor in its own right, almost every one of us prefers to use other software, including the ever-popular Microsoft Word, Apple’s own Pages, and NeoOffice. It’s under appreciated, which is why numerous Mac users are looking for ways to change their default text editors.
- Aug 19, 2011 TextEdit was a replacement for the old text SimpleText application and is also used with Unix and Linux operating systems. Mac OS X Lion TextEdit for Windows is a Mac style text editor for Windows which is designed to be an alternative to the Windows default Notepad program. Lion TextEdit is a portable software which aims to completely.
- I find about 40 documents stored. In TextEdit I have only 13 documents. In resuming the sessions, week after week, TextEdit has lost many other documents — I have not closed them. The good news is that these documents did not get deleted. The bad news is that TextEdit forgot to restore many of these documents. – Nicolas Barbulesco Jul 19.
- TextEdit is the simple and easy to use text editor for Windows that allows you view and edit HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, PERL, SQL, Delphi, C, C, and other languages source code.
- Learn HTML Using Notepad or TextEdit. Web pages can be created and modified by using professional HTML editors. However, for learning HTML we recommend a simple text editor like Notepad (PC) or TextEdit (Mac). We believe in that using a simple text editor is a good way to learn HTML.
Although you can always choose to open your text documents by right-clicking and picking the Open With option, there are people who want to save up fingertip stamina by merely double-clicking the selected text files. Fortunately, there are several ways you can change the default text editor on a Mac.
New Mac users may not know about TextEdit, a simple but deep text editing and word processing tool that comes with your Mac.
Using Get Info
Textedit Text Editor Mac Download
Let’s say you have a document you’re editing for the long-term and it will stay for days on one of your folders. Given that when you open it, the Mac’s default settings will always lead to it opening on TextEdit. To change this, one of the ways to do this is to resort to change the default text editor by accessing the Get Info menu. Here’s how to do it:
- First, right-click on the document and a drop down menu will appear.
- Select Get Info.
- After the menu appears there’s a drop down box labeled Open with. Select your preferred text editor from the list. Note that the drop down box may not hold certain word processing programs currently installed on your computer.
You can also use this method to set particular file extensions to open at a program of your choosing.
To do this, simply follow these steps:
- First, right click on the selected file.
- Open the Get Info option.
- Instead of choosing a program from the drop down box, click on Other.
- Pick a program from Finder and once you picked the appropriate one, select it.
- Below the drop down box, a Change All button will appear.
- Click on the said button and a dialogue box – as shown in the picture above – will appear. Click on Continue to open all files with a .docx extension.
You can repeat this for other file types as necessary, particularly on RTF, doc, and txt.
Using the Terminal
Although the above mentioned method is the easiest way you can change your default text editors, you can go take the long way out by using the Mac’s Terminal. Simply go over this Stack Exchange thread to get a clear idea on how to do it.
However, we really don’t recommend using the Terminal for this, given that it’s utterly complicated and you might make a mistake in editing your configuration files. It’s also pretty technical and anyone without proper programming experience would not understand how to do all of it.
Although TextEdit is undoubtedly useful (but only for limited functions), its not a go-to solution for all your word processing tasks. There are several other apps and programs, like MS Word, Open Office, and Sublime Text 2 that can cater to your work-related needs.
To save precious seconds, simply follow the above mentioned procedures and you will find yourself able to open your preferred word processors with a couple of clicks.
TextEdit User Guide
You can use TextEdit to edit or display HTML documents as you’d see them in a browser (images may not appear), or in code-editing mode.
Note: By default, curly quotes and em dashes are substituted for straight quotes and hyphens when editing HTML as formatted text. (Code-editing mode uses straight quotes and hyphens.) To learn how to change this preference, see New Document options.
Create an HTML file
Textmate
In the TextEdit app on your Mac, choose File > New, then choose Format > Make Plain Text.
Enter the HTML code.
Choose File > Save, type a name followed by the extension .html (for example, enter index.html), then click Save.
When prompted about the extension to use, click “Use .html.”
View an HTML document
In the TextEdit app on your Mac, choose File > Open, then select the document.
Click Options at the bottom of the TextEdit dialog, then select “Ignore rich text commands.”
Click Open.
Always open HTML files in code-editing mode
In the TextEdit app on your Mac, choose TextEdit > Preferences, then click Open and Save.
Select “Display HTML files as HTML code instead of formatted text.”
Change how HTML files are saved
Set preferences that affect how HTML files are saved in TextEdit.
In the TextEdit app on your Mac, choose TextEdit > Preferences, then click Open and Save.
Below HTML Saving Options, choose a document type, a style setting for CSS, and an encoding.
Select “Preserve white space” to include code that preserves blank areas in documents.
If you open an HTML file and don’t see the code, TextEdit is displaying the file the same way a browser would (as formatted text).