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BBEdit

Score9.1 out of 10

16 Reviews and Ratings

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What is BBEdit?

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

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Reviews

What users are saying about BBEdit.
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Great Text Utility

Incentivized
Michael PrewittView profile
Creative Director at It Is Written, Inc. (11-50 employees employees)

Pros

  • BBEdit has great file tools: access the file system, including hidden files and folders; direct FTP/SFTP support; access to Git and Subversion; support for projects (related files, such as the files for a website); access contents of ZIP archives; change file encoding (UTF, etc.); and more.
  • BBEdit has numerous commands for formatting text and especially code. There are many ways to select, copy, convert, format, search, replace, compare, and tidy up text and code projects. Its text processing is available to the OS X Automator app.

Cons

  • I've not seen that BBEdit is useful for optimizing code. That is, it doesn't give you hints about ways to improve your code, such as flagging inefficient or obsolete methods or commands. Its syntax checking is relatively basic.
  • The software is somewhat expensive (currently about $50 for a new license), although the price has come down from what it used to be. Other similar apps such as Brackets by Adobe or Visual Studio Code by Microsoft are free.

Return on Investment

  • I bought my own license, so it cost my company nothing. In the big picture, it is a low-cost app, even though similar free options exist.
  • I am a frequent GREP (regular expression) user, and the GREP support in this app has saved me a lot of time with some complex searches or extraction projects. Steps that might have taken hours to do manually can be done in mere minutes. Possibly the app paid for itself in just one or two of those instances.

Alternatives Considered

Brackets and Microsoft Visual Studio Code

BBEdit: The Text Wrangler We Know and Love

Incentivized
Courtney BirnbaumView profile
Senior Publications Specialist at Learfield IMG College (1001-5000 employees employees)

Pros

  • BBEdit remembers what I had open, so I never have to worry about losing work when I accidentally close the software. It will hold onto information almost indefinitely, so that the next time I open a program, I can access the information that I may have forgotten to save. Thankfully, its save function is also very simple to use, so I recommend still saving your work as needed.
  • Scripts are the most important aspect of BBEdit for the company I work for. Being able to import scripts and create new ones all in the same location are great.

Cons

  • One slightly annoying thing about BBEdit is the Currently Open Documents sidebar. If you open a second document, all documents are now tabbed with this column on the left, making you need to adjust your window to return to the window size you were using. Even closing all but one document will not remove the sidebar; it is only fixed when you close the software and open it again. Not a big issue, but worth mentioning.
  • Many of BBEdit's best tools are behind a paywall. We do not need most of these functions for our work, so I cannot speak on them from my limited use during the program's free trial period.

Return on Investment

  • BBEdit is the only way we can manage the quick turnaround required with stats and sports information for the NCAA championships, because it allows us to quickly adjust text into the spacing and style we need.
  • Without BBEdit scripts, we would have to work much later hours on championship deadlines, first structuring our information and then triple checking. With BBEdit, we save hundreds of hours of work each year.

BBEdit: Three Decades of Blistering Speed

Incentivized
Jeff EatonView profile
Senior Digital Strategist in Professional Services at Lullabot (51-200 employees employees)

Pros

  • 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.

Cons

  • It integrates with browsers for HTML preview, but it's a shame it can't do the same for markdown files.

Return on Investment

  • 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.

Alternatives Considered

IntelliJ WebStorm, Visual Studio IDE and Komodo IDE

Other Software Used

Dropbox Business, Adobe Illustrator CC, Sketch, Fusion 360, Audacity, Slack, screenflow, Oracle VM VirtualBox

BBEdit zaps the gremlims!

Incentivized
Kevin O'GradyView profile
Founder in Customer Service at The World of Empowerment Organization (1-10 employees employees)

Pros

  • I love the SORT functionality of BBEdit
  • The ease of use makes it a superior product to every text editor out there.
  • BBEdit handles text like a pro, and like all text, editors should.

Cons

  • BBEdit is hard to learn
  • BBEdit is so full of functionality that it needs a better onboarding system.
  • It is fast and efficient at what it does.

Return on Investment

  • Saves a lot of time
  • Makes text editing complete
  • Takes the drudge out of search and replace and zapping gremlins.

Alternatives Considered

TextEdit

Other Software Used

TextEdit, ProWritingAid, Snagit

BBedit: It's been around forever, but is it really still worth it?

Incentivized
Jason Smith, DPA
Instructional Technologist in Information Technology at Pomona College (201-500 employees employees)

Pros

  • Easy to use, anyone can use BBEdit.
  • Highly configurable and it is easy to create automated tasks.
  • The internal help function is really good!
  • The company is committed to BBEdit.

Cons

  • The cost of this product has just become too much for the functionality that most people need. You can find free or $10 tools that do what most people need to do.
  • The BBEdit program has lots of functionality, but could it be too much? Are there too many options?
  • It seems that there are too many upgrades.

Return on Investment

  • No negative impact, as we are talking about a $49 investment.
  • Positive, well it lets folks get their work done in an environment that they are comfortable in.
  • Yes, we achieve our ROI!

Alternatives Considered

Atom, Notepad++ and BlueFish

Other Software Used

Atom, BlueFish, NetBeans