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Dockland

macrumors 6502a
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Feb 26, 2021
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Are there any free plain text editors you recommend? MacOS Textedit is quite buggy for me (and a lot other Big sur users).
I only use it as plain text, and if sync between devices via iCloud works it's a big plus.
 
Can I open the files on an iOS device?
The documents can be opened, but as far as editing on iOS goes you ought to seek to open these files in a different editor on your iOS device.
However, you can open these files no problem. I had to try it myself - just opening the CotEditor folder and opening a document via the Files app on my iPhone 8 device. Works fine :)
 
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The documents can be opened, but as far as editing on iOS goes you ought to seek to open these files in a different editor on your iOS device.
However, you can open these files no problem. I had to try it myself - just opening the CotEditor folder and opening a document via the Files app on my iPhone 8 device. Works fine :)

Oh my, it's wonderful. Thank you. (And M1 optimized) In love with it already. <3
 
Been using CotEditor a couple of days, and I can't praise it enough. The best I've used regardless of platform.
 
I know the post is about Big Sur but I thought I'd mention that CotEditor requires Catalina or newer.
Or Mojave if already downloaded through the Mac App Store - you'll be presented with an older version of CotEditor if that's the case :)

Probably the same on even older macOS ?!

So, for sure. The current version. Didn't mean to take anything away from your informative post.
 
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Or Mojave if already downloaded through the Mac App Store - you'll be presented with an older version of CotEditor if that's the case :)

Probably the same on even older macOS ?!

So, for sure. The current version. Didn't mean to take anything away from your informative post.
Thanks for that…made me check their website for older versions…which they have.
 
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When pasting text in to a plain text window and continue to write in the text field, all the text disappears and I have to force close the text document.
Odd. I have not seen that behavior. Pasting into a new plain text window followed by typing text works as expected. (11.3.1)
 
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Are you on Big Sur with M1?

E: The bug
that would be frustrating.

Yes, I'm on 11.3.1 with an M1 Air.
I also tried this on my work Intel MBP also with 11.3.1.

It didn't do it with a small amount of text but when I pasted enough text that does not fit on the screen, it looks like the cursor position is confused. I had to scroll to the top of the document and back down to end point to get the cursor and insertion point to work properly. As a work around, you might do a CMD-Uparrow and then CMD-downarrow right after pasting. that seemed to restore the cursor point for me.

Sorry, I haven't really used TextEdit in years. I prefer BBedit for text editing.

I added a report to that thread you posted.
 
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I did notice that TextEdit does a weird thing where documents open on one computer are automatically synced to another one on your cloud account using Handoff. That seems like a complex process and I would not be surprised if that sync process were to mangle the cursor position. I don't know where that sync is controlled, but if I were facing this problem with TextEdit I would look around for a way to turn off that sync and see if the problem goes away.
 
I use BBEdit, but it is maybe an overkill for your needs.

Likewise. I bought it for a couple of coding projects that I was doing... but continue to use it as a text editor... pretty incredible software, but it is a bit overkill for simple text editing usage, I'd say.
 
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