Brackets Reviews & Insights

Score9.2 out of 10

34 Reviews and Ratings

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for Brackets are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

Live Preview Feature: Many users have found the Live Preview feature extremely helpful, as it has allowed them to make real-time adjustments to their CSS and instantly see the effects on the page they are coding. This feature has been praised for its convenience and efficiency in streamlining the coding process.

File Tree Tool: The recently added file tree feature has been widely praised as a time-saving tool by users. They appreciate being able to drag and drop files without needing to minimize the program, which enhances productivity and makes organizing files much easier.

Extensibility: Users have consistently mentioned that one of their favorite features of Brackets is its ability to update the core program with extensions. These extensions range from simple ones like themes to more advanced ones that offer assistance in coding tasks such as generating Lorem Ipsum text. The availability of these extensions has greatly enhanced users' experience with Brackets, making it a versatile tool for various coding needs.

Reviews

14 Reviews

The brackets Live preview feature is a must have

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

January 7, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use Brackets everyday for coding emails or landing pages. I work mostly with html, css and JavaScript. It’s a great simple to use editor. You can add extensions that help you code. It’s great for the live preview feature that I can see my edits in browser in real time.

Pros

Html
Css
Javascript
Mass update

Cons

Live preview is buggy to get launched
Better error findings
More formatting options like make all text upper or lowercase.
Better indentation

Likelihood to Recommend

Great for coding html and css based websites or emails. Very clean and simple to use.

Less appropriate for large scale projects maybe.

Crystal Pacheco

Sr. Web Developper in Information Technology at Merge (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

8 years of experience

View profile

A quick and light tool to help you code

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

June 23, 2023

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

The product helps me write code better. I enjoy the feature of matching brackets, as well as the color coding of different functions. It also makes scanning through code easier with the ability to open and close functions.

Pros

Color coding
Highlighting
Open and closing

Cons

The option to customize a theme would be nice
The ability to support better network connections
Project management features could be a bit more featured

Likelihood to Recommend

If you like a quick text based coding tool, then Brackets is right for you.

Tony Danh

Web Developer in Information Technology at Seaport Diagnostics (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

8 years of experience

View profile

No frills, no fuss, BUT simple and effective

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

May 2, 2022

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Brackets to make changes to, and edit, our HTML, CSS, JS and PHP files. Using the "edit" function in our FTP application opens the relevant file in Brackets directly from the web server (or local server). Once our changes are done, the save command in Brackets sends the updated version back to our FTP server and the file is uploaded and ready live on the web. Brackets speeds up our overall editing process tremendously.

Pros

Edit code directly
Color-code code snippets for an easy overview
Clean interface for distraction-free editing
Lightweight application with fast loading speeds

Cons

Showing hints for potential coding or syntax errors
Having descriptions for the working files list (especially when working on multiple index.php files at once)
Easier preference settings

Likelihood to Recommend

We use Brackets exclusively to make coding changes on our websites, specifically changes to PHP & HTML files, as well as CSS and HTACCESS files. We use FileZilla as our FTP application and have set the edit functionality to open the selected file directly in Brackets. When we've located the specific file that needs editing, it's as simple as a right-click, then "edit." The file opens in Brackets, we make our changes, select save, and the updated file is re-uploaded directly to the server. Depending on the settings in FileZilla, we have an additional prompt confirming that we are overwriting the current file, with the updated version.

Olaf Schaum

Founder in Marketing at LiveSociety (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

Brackets Rules

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

April 23, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I currently use Brackets as a way to edit XML files. We have a client that submits XML files to our production team. Brackets is a simple program that allows you to edit the code. I'm not a coder but this program is easy enough to use and to get the job done. Currently, I am the only one using the software.

Pros

Easy coding
Simple interface
Only need a basic understanding of code to use

Cons

Without being a coder and never having used other html software, I can't say I have any cons of Brackets. Brackets was recommended to me and that's all I've used. It works for my purposes.

Likelihood to Recommend

Brackets is a simple to use code editor. I use it for basic HTML and XML document editing. I can't say that there's any scenario where Brackets is an inappropriate program. Maybe for coders that are coding all day long, but from what I can tell Brackets can handle any and all coding efforts.

Verified User

Manager in Customer Service (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Brackets: A Modern Web Application Development IDE.

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

January 29, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Brackets have been used for many years for developing web applications based on HTML, CSS, and BootStrap. It is being preferred over the other IDE because of its feature of live preview, which allows seeing the result of the developing application live and as fast as possible. It is not only used for developing web-based applications but also used for writing software codes in various supported languages such as Java, C/C++, Python, Groovy, etc. This IDE supports all the modern languages, and It is very light in weight. Moreover, it is available to use freely.

Pros

Live preview is best feature of the Brackets.
Intellisense for the many languages is available.

Cons

Takes more time on startup.
Sometime Live preview automatically shut down.

Likelihood to Recommend

Brackets is an excellent Development IDE for Web applications. It is straightforward to use and can be used by both experts as well as novice programmers. The Brackets IDE supports many languages, and plug-ins are available for different languages for additional features. It is free to use and openly accessible over the Internet for downloading.

Kunal Verma

Software Engineer Intern in Research & Development at UBC (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

Brackets is a great (basic) code editor

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

November 10, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use Brackets for basic code editing in HTML, CSS, JavaScript (and jQuery), and PHP & MySQL. It is not the most advanced editor but is my go-to because it is quick and easy to use.

Pros

Highlighting code
Code indenting with a hotkey (if you enable the feature).
Fast and easy setup.

Cons

Managing projects, such as opening files from a repo. It can be done, but it is pretty much file by file instead of accessing a project or folder.
Working with repos (see the previous answer).

Likelihood to Recommend

I'd recommend Brackets for basic editing or if someone wanted to make quick code changes in a good tool.

Verified User

Manager in Marketing (5001-10,000 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

A nice open source editor for web view development (HTML, JS, CSS)

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

October 17, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

This product is used by developers to develop applications using a wide variety of programming languages and syntax. The program is used by a limited number of developers and is not used outside of the technology department (to my knowledge). It addresses the needs of developers by providing an extendable, customizable, and rich editor for use with Javascript, HTML, XML, and Java.

Pros

Javascript auto minification
Code auto-completion
Extensibility (custom add-ons) is easy to configure. Many are available for code beautification, formatting, syntax checking.

Cons

Can be a little slow to open and render larger files at times relative to a similar application running on the same computer.
Some plugins have performance or quality issues (not the fault of Brackets per se, but with the ecosystem of extensions).
Color schemes, styling ease of use could be improved. For example, provide out-of-the-box schemes like "high-contrast, night-time, bold."

Likelihood to Recommend

Well Suited: Javascript, CSS, and HTML development. Brackets works better with scripting languages as in the situation where you are augmenting an IDE like Eclipse, where web page development is lacking. Less approprate: developing in environments when controlling the servers is required, or where a compilation of code is needed. It would not be useful in environments like .Net where a superior editor exists.

Jeff Hanson

Applications Manager, Information Technology Services in Information Technology at Turlock Irrigation District (201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

View profile

HTML should go into Brackets

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

August 5, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Brackets is the workhorse for developing HTML and CSS projects. There is a lot of overlap in the world of text editors, and we actually use several, as they are useful for different things. The niche Brackets fills, it fills nicely, with a few specific conveniences. The specific features that make it such a time-saver are the image hover info and the live updating browser view.

Pros

Image hover info. If you hover your mouse over an image link in the code, you get specific file information that is useful for the HTML, image size and dimensions, etc. ...as well as a preview.
Live browser preview. You can open your working files in a browser and all saved changes are automatically updated. It doesn't seem like a big deal to go over to the browser and refresh, but once you get used to it, it is a pain when missing in other browsers.
Brackets is still fairly small in the text editor arena, but there is already a rich ecosystem of plugins and customizations.
It is actually fairly easy to create your own custom themes.
Multiple cursors!! It is amazing to be able to insert multiple cursors and type the same thing in multiple places.

Cons

As it is a javascript based program it can have some performance issues, especially with larger files (too large and it can't even open them).
Themes are limited to the editor area, but it would be nice to be able to customize the file-tree and gutter areas.
And the smallest quibble of all, make the open files area resizable. It's a little annoying to have to scroll up and down when you have plenty of screen space to see all the open files.

Likelihood to Recommend

Brackets can handle most text editing problems, at least if you have a file small enough that it opens. But with so many free and open-source editors out there, it is easy to have multiple tools that fit specific niches. If you are editing HTML and CSS, get Brackets.

Verified User

Employee in Information Technology (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

Best Application for Web Designer

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

June 11, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Bracket is an open source code editor that helps us to create new web pages or sites. I have been using this application for the last few years and it seems it provides a simple interface to web designers. Many members of our team used this application to create websites as well, as it helps to manage multiple pages at once.

Pros

Live preview of web page
Inline editor
simple user interface
Easily switch between the tabs or pages

Cons

Some ready-made code
Unexpected shutdown (Not Responding)
Auto save option

Likelihood to Recommend

If you are a beginner in the web designing field and you need the best application from which you can manage web pages easily then this is a perfect opportunity to use Bracket without any cost. This is a nice application for an earlier stage. With Bracket, it is hard to know the start and end point of Div, Section, or Class. You need to maintain it from the starting point.

Somit Vishwakarma

SEO Executive in Information Technology at Mails Daddy Software Private Limited (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

View profile

Brackets for the win

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

February 25, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Currently, we use Brackets as the tool of choice for editing CSS and HTML classes for our various web applications. It’s mainly used by our software engineering group/teams as we stand up and modify our applications.

Pros

Editing CSS classes are done particularly well. It’s very simple and straightforward. Brackets will throw errors while editing so you know where you may have made a wrong turn. Very helpful
The simple UI is refreshing. Often times code editors throw too much on the screen. Brackets keeps it simple and it’s appreciated!

Cons

Would be nice if Brackets had an easy way to export and share code between users. Would help on projects you are working on together.

Likelihood to Recommend

Brackets is great for editing CSS and HTML code and classes. Some colleagues of mine have used it to edit Java classes with minimal success. I would suggest keeping it to simpler code and leaving Java and other similar languages to Eclipse or similar tools.

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience