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Seeking a text editor which:

  • is OS X compatible
  • has tabbed windows
  • has the ability to format text (bold, italics, different fonts, sizes, etc)
  • does not require an account or internet connection to run

There seem to be a world of text editors which offer tabs (macvim, sublime text, bbedit, etc) but most of these are targeted toward programmers and offer no way to visually format the text.

The one app I found that is very close to what I want is Bean, but it is not longer under development, and it doesn't support plaintext.

Basically what I'm looking for is something akin to TextEdit with tabbed windows.

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  • I think you are going to have trouble finding a 'text' program that allows you to manage formatting. One purpose of a text editor is that it is platform independent, drop it into word, open off, a browser...works with everything, when you start using formatting you complicate that compatibility.
    – James
    Mar 6, 2014 at 16:59
  • Do you know Scrivener? It is fairly expensive, a bit bloated and especially no text editor. That's why I didn't put it in as an answer. And it doesn't really have tabs but something like it. Mar 23, 2014 at 0:15
  • Yes I've looked at it. Like you said, bloated and doesn't have tabbed windows. Thanks though Mar 24, 2014 at 1:30

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The contradiction is on plain text and text formatting. Plain text is not formatted. You can always learn Markdown and then even use Sublime Text to handle your texts, but I believe you'll be happier with something like VoodooPad perhaps?

  • 100% OS X;
  • You can have your documents in tabs;
  • You can create rich text documents, where you're allowed to format your text;
  • It is native, so no internet connection required.

VoodooPad is really more powerful than that: you can create scripts for it, merge/split documents, many export options (you'll probably enjoy this one), built-in Markdown support (in case you decide to learn the syntax) and encryption.

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