AxEdit
AxEdit starts with the things a text editor should do well: open files quickly, preserve exactly what you were given, provide familiar tabs, find and replace text, handle encodings and line endings correctly, and stay out of the way.
When you want more, turn on AxEdit++ for syntax highlighting, line numbers, regular-expression search and other advanced editing tools.
The basics, done properly
- Classic document tabs. Real tabs along the top of the window, the way a document-based editor should have them.
- Opens quickly, including large files. Large text files load and stay responsive while you work in them.
- Find and Replace. Literal find and replace, plus Word Wrap and Go to Line.
- Encodings handled correctly. UTF-8, UTF-16 and the common legacy encodings, detected when a file opens — with Open With Encoding when you need to override the guess.
- Line endings preserved. LF, CRLF and CR survive a round trip, mixed files included, and you can convert them deliberately when you actually want to.
- Your file comes back the way it went in. AxEdit does not quietly normalise, reformat or re-encode a document you only opened to read.
- Picks up where you left off. Open documents are restored between launches, and unsaved work is recovered if the app is interrupted.
- Notices changes made elsewhere. If a file changes underneath you, AxEdit tells you instead of overwriting it silently.
- A proper Mac application. Native light and dark appearance, Open Recent, drag and drop to open, and ordinary sandboxed file access.
- A status bar that tells you where you are. Line and column, the document's encoding, and its line-ending style.
Need more? Turn on AxEdit++.
AxEdit++ adds power-user editing without turning AxEdit into a different product or a paid edition. It is a free optional mode inside AxEdit — not a separate application, not a subscription, not a licence level. Switch it on in Settings when you want it, and off when you don't.
- Syntax highlighting for the languages listed below.
- Line numbers in the editor gutter.
- Regular-expression Find and Replace alongside the literal search.
- Syntax themes, with light and dark variants.
- Visual Studio Code theme import for compatible themes you already use.
Languages AxEdit++ highlights
- Swift
- JSON
- Markdown
- Shell
- C
- C++
- Objective-C
- Objective-C++
- Java
- JavaScript
- TypeScript
- Python
- HTML
- XML
- CSS
- SQL
- CFML / CFScript
Anything AxEdit doesn't recognise opens as plain text, with no highlighting applied.
Why is AxEdit free?
Axys Software makes extensive use of AI as part of an experienced software-engineering process. This is not “vibe coding”: AxEdit is built under the direction of a software engineer with more than thirty years of professional development experience, using normal design, testing, security and engineering practice.
Working this way makes development efficient enough that we can release genuinely useful applications like AxEdit for free, and concentrate our commercial work on larger projects.
Where AxEdit came from
AxEdit began when newer macOS tab design changes turned out not to suit a conventional text editor. Rather than work around it, we built the editor we wanted.
It then grew into an answer to a longer-standing gap: a simple Mac editor that stays lightweight for everyday editing, while optionally offering many of the capabilities people go looking for in Notepad++-class tools.
Support and feedback
Need help? Have a suggestion or feature request? Visit our support forum — feature suggestions are genuinely welcome, and they shape what gets built next.