12 Feb 2026
TextMate is a graphical text editor for macOS built by Allan Odgaard and MacroMates Ltd. It was a big deal in the mid-2000s, especially in the Ruby on Rails community, and while VS Code has eaten most of its market share, TextMate remains a clean, fast, native macOS editor. It's free and open-source now. Requires macOS 10.12 or later.
I started using TextMate around for quick file editing and Markdown notes. It opens faster than VS Code and doesn't nag me about extensions or telemetry. For serious Python development I use other tools, but for editing config files, writing plain text, or quick scripting, TextMate is hard to beat on macOS. The bundle system influenced an entire generation of editors. The main limitation is that active development has slowed significantly, and the plugin ecosystem is much smaller than VS Code's.
Why TextMate Still Matters
TextMate is a genuinely native Mac app. It launches instantly, feels right on macOS, and doesn't eat 500MB of RAM just sitting there. If you want a lightweight editor that respects macOS conventions and doesn't require Electron, it's still a solid choice. Good for quick editing, plain text workflows, and Markdown writing.
Key Features
Multiple Carets
Edit multiple locations at once. Select a word, hit Ctrl+W to expand selection, and you can rename variables or swap code blocks in place.
Bundles
Bundles are the core extensibility mechanism. A bundle packages language grammars, snippets, commands, and macros together. TextMate's grammar format (.tmLanguage) became an industry standard - VS Code, Sublime Text, and Atom all adopted it.
Snippets
Reusable text templates with tab stops, placeholders, and transformations. Snippets are scoped to specific languages, so a "close tag" snippet only fires in HTML. They can include shell script interpolation.
Version Control
Built-in support for viewing diffs in the file browser and editor. You can commit subsets of changes directly from the editor. Works with Git and other VCS tools.
Other Notable Features
| Feature | Details |
|---|---|
| Search | In-file and project-wide with regex, preview replacements before applying |
| Clipboard history | Cycle through previous clipboard entries |
| Macros | Record and replay sequences of actions |
| Code folding | Collapse blocks based on indentation or syntax |
| Live preview | HTML and Markdown preview via WebKit |
| Soft wrap | Indented soft wrap that respects code structure |
| Themes | Full theme support for syntax highlighting and UI |
Extensibility
Commands and actions are UNIX-based. They read from stdin and write to stdout. You can build custom tools using shell scripts, Python, Ruby, or anything with a CLI. Output can render as HTML via WebKit dialogs. This was ahead of its time in 2004 and still works well for quick custom tooling.
Personal Take
Resources
Theme file: ~/Library/Application Support/TextMate/Managed/Bundles/Themes.tmbundle