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BBEdit

BBEdit

Overview

What is BBEdit?

BBEdit is a text editor from Bare Bones software headquartered in Massachusetts.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

BBEdit, a popular code editor and text editing tool, is highly valued by a diverse range of users including software developers, …
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Pricing

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What is BBEdit?

BBEdit is a text editor from Bare Bones software headquartered in Massachusetts.

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  • No setup fee

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  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Product Details

What is BBEdit?

BBEdit Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

BBEdit is a text editor from Bare Bones software headquartered in Massachusetts.

Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 9.7.

The most common users of BBEdit are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(16)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

BBEdit, a popular code editor and text editing tool, is highly valued by a diverse range of users including software developers, strategists, and architects. Its fast and scriptable text manipulation features make it a go-to choice for developers who need to process raw data files before importing them into a database. Many Mac users rely on BBEdit for its functionality and familiarity, making it their preferred text editor.

Freelance web designers use BBEdit to ensure clean code without hidden formatting, while departments utilize its free option and script functions to semi-automate text processing tasks for publishing work. Sports departments specifically depend on BBEdit for processing text related to rosters, schedules, and other sports information. It is widely recognized that BBEdit outperforms default text editors on both PCs and Macs, making it the ideal choice for various text editing tasks.

Users appreciate BBEdit's comprehensive functionality and regard it as worth the investment. Its capabilities as a note-taker, code editor, and scratch-pad are highly useful with features like auto-save and macro functionality. It is especially reliable for working with CSV files, allowing users to make bulk changes efficiently and search for specific information seamlessly. In summary, BBEdit serves as an indispensable tool for many professionals in different industries thanks to its powerful features and unparalleled performance.

Efficient Multi-File Search and Replace: Several users have praised BBEdit for its powerful multi-file search and replace features, which are comparable to those found in UNIX command-line tools. This indicates that the software is highly capable and efficient when handling complex tasks.

Beneficial Source Control and Compiler Integration: Reviewers have mentioned that BBEdit offers source control and compiler integration, making it a valuable tool for software developers. This feature caters to the specific needs of this user group, enhancing their workflow efficiency.

Convenient Scripting and Macro Features: Users appreciate the scripting and macro capabilities offered by BBEdit, as they help streamline repetitive tasks. By providing automation capabilities, the software allows users to save time and increase productivity.

  1. Limited Markdown Support: Some users have expressed disappointment that BBEdit does not offer the same integration with browsers for HTML preview to markdown files. This feature limitation has been mentioned by multiple reviewers, hindering their ability to efficiently work with markdown files within the software.

  2. High Cost Relative to Functionality: Several reviewers have stated that they find the cost of BBEdit to be too high considering its functionality. They mention that there are free or low-cost alternatives available in the market that provide similar features, making it difficult for them to justify the expense of purchasing BBEdit.

  3. Overwhelming Options and Upgrades: A number of users feel overwhelmed by the numerous options and frequent upgrades offered by BBEdit. They question whether all the functionality provided is necessary for optimizing code and improving efficiency, suggesting that a streamlined version might be more user-friendly for those who prefer simplicity in their coding experience.

Users of BBEdit have provided several recommendations based on their experiences with the product. The three most common recommendations include:

  1. Trying BBEdit: Many users recommend giving BBEdit a try, especially for Mac users who need a powerful tool for manipulating raw text and coding. Users suggest trying the free version of Textwrangler or the BBEdit trial to see if it meets their needs. Some users even mention that BBEdit is the best text editor on the market and has been for more than two decades.

  2. Exploring Features and Tutorials: Users highlight the abundance of features in BBEdit and consider it essential for teams that frequently work with text. They believe that BBEdit can significantly boost the development of business systems due to its functionalities. However, some users suggest going through text selection tutorials before using BBEdit in production to fully take advantage of its capabilities.

  3. Pop-up Issue: While many users appreciate the features of BBEdit, some have expressed frustration with pop-ups that appear while using the application. These users hope that future updates will address this issue, as they find it disruptive to their workflow.

In summary, users recommend trying BBEdit, exploring its features, and taking advantage of tutorials. While many praise its power and simplicity, some would like to see improvements regarding pop-ups.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-1 of 1)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Jeff Eaton | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our team is roughly 75% software developers; even strategists and architects need to be savvy enough to dip into the source code on occasion. Although full-fledged IDEs are common on the team, BBEdit is a popular swiss army knife that proves its worth as a code editor and a general-purpose text editing tool. When it comes time to process raw data files before they're imported into a database, BBEdit and its fast, scriptable text manipulation features can shave off days of troubleshooting and tool-tweaking.
  • Multi-file search and replace features that rival the most powerful UNIX command-line tools.
  • Source control and compiler integration for software developers.
  • Scripting and macro features that speed repetitive work.
  • It integrates with browsers for HTML preview, but it's a shame it can't do the same for markdown files.
BBEdit was born in the memory-starved days of the early 90s when monitors were black and white and some computers still shipped with a megabyte of RAM. Feature-rich IDEs like Komodo, WebStorm, and even VisualStudio IDE can bring more advanced features like debugger integration and automatic refactoring, but none can rival BBEdit's raw speed. Often, I'll launch BBEdit, open a multi-megabyte codebase, searched for the relevant function calls, and fixed a bug before the "full-featured" alternatives have even finished indexing the same code.

For anyone who works with large data files (tab or comma-separated data, JSON or XML, etc), BBEdit excels at the ugly work of scrubbing and formatting data before it's fed into an automated import or migration process. It puts a clean interface on top of powerful GREP tools, including the ability to save and recall common patterns; it lets me select "columns" of data in raw text files and manipulate them like a spreadsheet; it can call out to shell scripts and command-line utilities to augment its own built-in scripting and automation tools; it has canned tools for managing capitalization, line prefixes and suffixes, stripping and mapping high ASCII characters, removing Unicode "junk" characters, and more. And that's just scratching the surface.
  • BBEdit has literally saved product launches by speeding the process of scrubbing and prepping large-scale data imports.
  • It's eliminated hours per week of waiting for "full-featured" IDEs.
As a pure software IDE, BBEdit is showing its age. It's got things like syntax highlighting, source control support, and integration with command-line compilers… but popular features like automated refactoring and debugger integration have left it behind. On the other hand, you'll be able to launch BBEdit, grep through your codebase, fix a bug, and check in your changes before those other IDEs have finished opening a project. It's hard to overstate what a difference that speed makes; I often find myself keeping BBEdit open in the background for quick tasks even when I'm using other IDEs.

For the data manipulation and text processing tasks where it really excels, I'm not aware of any alternatives. It's possible to build similar functionality with custom shell scripts, open-source command-line tools, and so on… but in the meantime, BBEdit is here, its engine rumbling and ready to go.
I've been using BBEdit — no joke — for nearly three decades now. Believe it or not, I'm still getting "upgrade pricing" 13 versions later. Bare Bones' support has always been stellar, and pricing continues to be affordable compared to similar tools.
No
Bare Bones Software's "standard" level of support is already good — I've never felt the need for anything above and beyond their normal responsive service.
Yes
I ran into a fairly extreme edge case trying to combine complex search-and-replace functionality with an external script to do additional processing on large data files. I wasn't sure if I'd encountered a bug or just hit the limits of the product's features, but support explained the details of the feature I was using, and helped me work around the limitation.

Later, additional functionality was added to BBEdit making the workaround unnecessary. Can't beat that!
It's hard to pin down a specific incident — I've been using BBEdit long enough that a lot of the challenges I encountered were more than a decade ago; it's been problem-free for me longer than many competing programs have even existed. One case that stands out, though, was transitioning from a Mac App Store purchase to a direct purchase from Bare Bones. Because "full" BBEdit offers tools that directly integrate with the file system and other OS features, the Mac App Store version is missing a few key capabilities. I contacted Bare Bones asking about a "sidegrade" to the non-sandboxed version and it was done within fifteen minutes.
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