Try Out This New Free Mac Text Editor [Review]

New on the Mac App Store is Tincta, a text editor for coders and writers. It’s small, lightweight, fast – and free.

The single window layout lists open files in a panel on the left. The preferences are simple and basic. This is an application that’s still very much feeling its way into the big wide world.

That doesn’t mean that it’s incapable, though. Tincta comes with support for 70 programming languages, line numbering, and a nice search-and-replace tool. It’s been written from scratch, no third-party code included.

Not everything’s there just yet. No full screen mode (not even of the system-wide Lion variety), and changes to text colors have to be made manually – you can’t save a color scheme, or import one from elsewhere.

Also, although the app launches in an instant, I did occasionally notice just a tiny amount of sluggishness while writing and editing. It wasn’t a big problem, though.

The basic version costs nothing. There’s a Pro version on offer for a few dollars, which adds features such as split views, scripting support, a snippet manager and built-in file browser.

It’s always great to see a newcomer on the scene, so keep your eye on future updates. The “keep it simple” approach is always appealing, as is the use of an octopus for an icon.

Rating:

4 comments »