The last time I used Notepad++ on Windows, it didn’t handle very large files very well. I’m talking about 10s of GB files. Notepad++ would just freeze up. I wasn't impressed. BBEdit can handle such files readily. They take a while to load but then everything works normally. I don't know if it is a difference between MacOS and Windows or if it is just the application but very large log files caused Notepad++ huge problems. I eventually resorted to using a Windows port of VIM which worked a bit better.
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An Application similar to NOTEPAD++ on Mac
- Thread starter stanleystf
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I used to use Notepad++ on Windows and BBEdit on Mac. I've since switched to Visual Studio Code. It's cross platform, so I use it on Mac and Windows. It is an Electron app, but it's the one people use as an example proving Electron doesn't have to be bad. 
A lot of developers use it as their IDE after adding the extensions for their language.
A lot of developers use it as their IDE after adding the extensions for their language.
I heavily use Notepad++ on Windows. CotEditor on MacOS is a reasonable option.CotEditor is nice too:
CotEditor
CotEditor is a light-weight, neat, yet powerful text editor designed for editing plain-text files such as web pages (HTML, CSS), program source codes (Python, Ruby, Perl, etc.), structured texts (Markdown, Textile, TeX, etc.), or any other kind of plain-text. Just For Mac The application is...apps.apple.com
Notepad++ is open source with a big developer following. Those people write extensions and those extensions are part of what make Notepad++ great. Most suggested products have similar ecosystems, but not all.
VSCode is definitely one of the best Electron apps out there, however, it is still nowhere near the performance of a well optimized native app. Having said this, there are almost none "well optimized native" apps with the level of functionality Code provides out of the box. (a poor attempt was Nova, which they are improving, but for 100/year they are still way behind)It is an Electron app, but it's the one people use as an example proving Electron doesn't have to be bad.
I wish Code ditched Electron someday though tbh.
I like Nova. It seems to have enough plug-ins for what I use it for. And it is a Mac application not some repurposed browser code. I'm actually pretty amazed at VSCode's performance though for what it is.
I "trialled" Sublime for a long time but finally just coughed up for a license. Not a coder, but I use it constantly for general text uses and love it. It's lightning fast and can do absolutely anything you want to text. Also very pretty to look at.
For a general lightweight "all in one" text app I would also suggest Simplenote. It's got syncing and collaboration built in, and you can even publish a text file to the web with a couple of clicks.
Yea Sublime is awesome, and performance-wise unrivaled. We've used it extensively.
However, feature-wise it just stayed extremely stagnant. I know you can spend countless hours adding packages here & there, but a lot of its community migrated to Code, meaning many of these packages are either deprecated / unsupported / limited. In addition to that, they are very slow to bring new features, it's rock solid performing don't get me wrong, but on many things they've gotten behind. The decision to release a separate client for git (sublime merge) instead of bundling it within the text editor shows a bit of that, or having to install a package to bring up a terminal in 2022, come on, it's as if they are too scared to push it to the next level and they just want to milk it.
I'd find Code's functionality + Sublime's performance the ideal text editor.
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Because "massive" is a relative term it may help if you define the size of files you are working with. I can say with certainty that BBEdit is the only way to go for a GUI editor on Mac that can read and search really large text files. I can say that I have used BBEdit with files of over 10 million rows of tab-delimited data of several GB in size. BBEdit handles these without issue whereas every electron-based editor chokes and dies when attempting to deal with files of this size.
I would however suggest that opening really large files in an editor is rarely something that makes a lot of sense. Once a file gets really large it's typically time to use more appropriate tools to deal with searching it (such as importing the file into a database to query or using grep from the command line). However, when the need arises, BBEdit has been the King of native Mac editors for decades.
Ever since I started using Visual Studio Code I've never needed another text editor ever again. On any platform. It's really that good, despite the bad reputation of Electron (most people would never notice it's an Electron app unless you told them).
I dont understand why people hate electron apps. It's kind of like people hate on games made on Unity. Some are good, some are bad.
I just remembered another app that I used to use some ten to fifteen years ago, Smultron:
www.peterborgapps.com
Smultron is simple to use and works particularly well with large files. I tried a 300 MB text file in my beloved TextMate and it struggled opening it. Smultron opened it in a few seconds.
Smultron - Peter Borg Apps
Smultron is an elegant and powerful text editor for macOS that is easy to use
www.peterborgapps.com
Smultron is simple to use and works particularly well with large files. I tried a 300 MB text file in my beloved TextMate and it struggled opening it. Smultron opened it in a few seconds.
Aquamacs?
The Emacs for the Mac
An Editor for Text, HTML, LaTeX, C++, Java, Python, R, Perl, Ruby, PHP, and more… Aquamacs is a modern editor based on GNU Emacs. Read more. Download Aquamacs Emacs 3.6 for Mac OS 10.11 (El Capitan) or later
aquamacs.org
This is the most correct answer - sadly it doesn't have the "reopen with encoding" - which really is one of the only great features with notepad++
But I am sure there is some work around? hrm.
spacemacsAquamacs?
The Emacs for the Mac
An Editor for Text, HTML, LaTeX, C++, Java, Python, R, Perl, Ruby, PHP, and more… Aquamacs is a modern editor based on GNU Emacs. Read more. Download Aquamacs Emacs 3.6 for Mac OS 10.11 (El Capitan) or later
You might be able to run Notepad++ on your Mac if you install Wine.
www.winehq.org
WineHQ - Run Windows applications on Linux, BSD, Solaris and macOS
Open Source Software for running Windows applications on other operating systems.
www.winehq.org
I just remembered another app that I used to use some ten to fifteen years ago, Smultron:
Smultron - Peter Borg Apps
Smultron is an elegant and powerful text editor for macOS that is easy to use
Smultron is simple to use and works particularly well with large files. I tried a 300 MB text file in my beloved TextMate and it struggled opening it. Smultron opened it in a few seconds.
oh wow, I used that back then too. I had no idea it's still around. Loading it now! Thank you.
I personally use a combination of VSCode (for large multi-file projects where a full IDE is helpful) and TextMate (for quick lightweight editing and opening 5+ MB plain text files). VSCode is overkill and a bit bloated for some tasks, where a minimalist editor like TextMate is a little too limited for others, so having a full heavy IDE + lean-n-mean editor combo ensures you always have the right tool for the jobVisual Studio Code is pretty good. I use it for all text editing now. It's free and extensible:
Visual Studio Code - Code Editing. Redefined
Visual Studio Code is a code editor redefined and optimized for building and debugging modern web and cloud applications. Visual Studio Code is free and available on your favorite platform - Linux, macOS, and Windows.code.visualstudio.com
You don't have to use all the programming stuff unless you need it. I am mostly maintaining a huge tree of files with text notes in that date back about 25 years
EDIT: Also, for a friendly modern command-line based editor, micro is definitely worth checking out. Proper mouse/scrolling support, great theme support, good multi-file management, relatively easy and memorable key commands... as the name suggests, it's kind of like nano on sterioids.
you you know I there is an extension that would show me hex data with a color dot to know which color it is
VS Code is by far the best and free. Every other suggestion on this list has had it's time in the spotlight and faded since. VIM is the only competitor I encounter among my software engineering peers (and you'd already know if it was the one you wanted)
Another BBEdit (and TextWrangler before that) user here for years.