TextWrangler to Be Retired as Bare Bones Software Focuses Development on BBEdit

Bare Bones Software, the company behind popular code editors BBEdit and TextWrangler, this week announced plans to retire TextWrangler as it focuses development on BBEdit.

Going forward, TextWrangler will not be updated for the next version of macOS, but it will continue to be functional so long as the new version of macOS doesn't introduce any software-breaking bugs.

Bare Bones is instead recommending its customers download BBEdit 11.6, which was released in July. Customers can use BBEdit 11.6 unlicensed indefinitely, and the unlicensed version contains the same features that are available in TextWrangler. BBEdit is not available through the Mac App Store like TextWrangler, but can be downloaded from the Bare Bones Software website.

What you may not know is that last July, we released BBEdit 11.6. You can use this version unlicensed, forever, for free. Without a license, BBEdit now includes all of the features that TextWrangler offers, plus quite a few others. That's right. You no longer have to pick between them.

BBEdit is free for 30 days, after which a license costs $49.99. Customers who don't wish to purchase a license can continue to use the software's free features indefinitely.

Top Rated Comments

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ike1707

38 months ago

Who here remember the days of ResEdit?

Rating: 10 Votes

jeabraham

38 months ago

I think you're confusing "identified developer" and "app store". You can't submit apps to the app store without being an identified developer, but you can still sign your apps as an identified developer even if you release them outside of the app store. Your own screenshot shows that you can install apps that aren't on the app store, as long as they're signed.

Rating: 8 Votes

jmh600cbr

38 months ago

These guys make super bad icons

Rating: 7 Votes

dredlew

38 months ago

textmate is free. bbedit can die now.

Did you even attempt to read the article?

Rating: 7 Votes

Evil Spoonman

38 months ago

Text editors come and go with advantages and disadvantages. None has been more trusty than BBEdit. You always think you've come up with a new flashy editor and then you need to open a 500MB text file, or do complex multi-file processing, or some other damn thing... and your new flashy editor slows to a crawl, or doesn't behave properly, or crashes. And... back to BBEdit.

Although I do use Coda 2 for most of my development, I continue to use BBEdit for many, many things. And have done since BBEdit... 5 I think? Going on 20 years now. Some of the most robust software I've ever used.

I see it as only a good thing that they are unifying their code base.

Rating: 6 Votes

chrfr

38 months ago

Not making it available on the appstore is a very bad idea.

Lots of corporate policies got security requirements that computers run apps from only app store or trusted developers... and here when they mention trusted developers, it's developers that got signing certificates trusted by that company.

There's no worry. BareBones is a trusted developer, so you don't need to change settings regarding Gatekeeper.

Rating: 5 Votes

now i see it

38 months ago

BBEdit is one of the most important apps I've ever used. Without it I would have been out of a job. It's priceless if you know how to use grep and have to deal with thousands of files.

Rating: 4 Votes

Westside guy

38 months ago

I'm a happy (paid version of) BBEdit user.

Actually, I could do pretty much everything I wanted with the former BBEdit Lite and TextWrangler; but, as a web developer and sysadmin, I've found their apps so useful that I eventually bought the paid version to support the company.

Rating: 4 Votes

Bob Zimmerman

38 months ago

The problem is a lot of what BBEdit does isn't allowed for sandboxed applications. They can't install command-line tools, for example. Or elevate to root privileges to edit root-owned files. For a lot of sysadmins, that makes it significantly less useful.

Rating: 3 Votes

sentiblue

38 months ago