BBEdit 16

In 1998 bbedit 5.0 cost $120 usd. Adjusted for inflation that would be about $245 usd.

Today an individual license costs $60.

Wild how software pricing and sales models have changed, and good on bare bones for staying away from subscription pricing.

Proud user since the classic Mac OS days (anyone else remember the OpenDoc version?), and it's still a solid editor at a good price.

My search for a "just a text editor" ended with "CotEdit". It's Mac native, not Electron, and supports both RTL and vertical text. All I could ever want.

I use Zed more now, but BBEdit's still pretty great. I love, love, LOVE that I can extend it with shell scripts or Python tools or Rust apps or whatever else I have laying around. Sometimes I don't want to write a whole plugin, let alone in JavaScript or whatever. I just want to say "process this text with this tool" and have it work. BBEdit's second to none for that.

I have used and loved Barebones stuff in the past, but strikes me as odd they're still advertising Yojimbo on their main page. It was fantastic, but has been abandoned for quite some time.

Love to see this app trending on HN.

It still doesn't suck.

BBEdit used to be my text-transformation tool.

Happily paid for every update for years, even when I used Emacs, I kept BBedit in reach. For quick text edits/transformations (because Regex in Emacs is hard to use). But with LLMs + nvim I hardly start bbedit anymore.

So now with LLMs, I tell them what I need and they write a shell/Perl/Python script to make the craziest transformations.

So great to see this -- the last version of BBedit I paid for is the gold standard for me, for editors... I mean compared to twenty other editors of various kinds on desktop Linux and elsewhere..

I wonder if it will ever get emacs tabs.

> Support for vi keyboard emulation, for basic navigation and editing;

I'm sure some people will like this update, but it's a big meh for me. I'll wait for some further updates to upgrade.

In 1998 bbedit 5.0 cost $120 usd. Adjusted for inflation that would be about $245 usd.

Today an individual license costs $60.

Wild how software pricing and sales models have changed, and good on bare bones for staying away from subscription pricing.

The pie (market) has also vastly expanded since 1998. Need to factor that, and not just inflation.

My search for a "just a text editor" ended with "CotEdit". It's Mac native, not Electron, and supports both RTL and vertical text. All I could ever want.

It still doesn't suck.

BBEdit used to be my text-transformation tool.

So now with LLMs, I tell them what I need and they write a shell/Perl/Python script to make the craziest transformations.

Love to see this app trending on HN.

So great to see this -- the last version of BBedit I paid for is the gold standard for me, for editors... I mean compared to twenty other editors of various kinds on desktop Linux and elsewhere..

The pie (market) has also vastly expanded since 1998. Need to factor that, and not just inflation.

Proportionally, competition has vastly expanded too.

I have used and loved Barebones stuff in the past, but strikes me as odd they're still advertising Yojimbo on their main page. It was fantastic, but has been abandoned for quite some time.

It's supported for Tahoe. It's still good functional software and this is the ideal right? They're selling finished software for a flat price without needing a subscription model to support continued development.

You were downvoted but right. The changelog[0] shows that the current minor version (4.6) came out in 2020, and its only had 3 bugfix releases since then, most recently in 2023. A lot has changed since 2020, so this doesn't know about the major iCloud updates, or Apple Intelligence, or UI changes (not just talking about Liquid Glass either).

None of those things imply that it's broken or unusable. Still, it means it's going to feel like a dated app and that's not fun.

[0]https://www.barebones.com/support/yojimbo/archived_notes.htm...

Proud user since the classic Mac OS days (anyone else remember the OpenDoc version?), and it's still a solid editor at a good price.

I wonder if it will ever get emacs tabs.

> Support for vi keyboard emulation, for basic navigation and editing;

I'm sure some people will like this update, but it's a big meh for me. I'll wait for some further updates to upgrade.

Same. Recently moved to Windows (blah) but if I move back, that's a purchase for me.

I use emacs but I don't know what you're referring to. Can you enlighten me please

You can search for text within images.

Same. Recently moved to Windows (blah) but if I move back, that's a purchase for me.

Proportionally, competition has vastly expanded too.

You can search for text within images.

None of those things imply that it's broken or unusable. Still, it means it's going to feel like a dated app and that's not fun.

[0]https://www.barebones.com/support/yojimbo/archived_notes.htm...

> so this doesn't know about the major iCloud updates, or Apple Intelligence, or UI changes

I'm not familiar with macOS: Why would an application need to be updated for any of these? Were the existing APIs insufficient to integrate these?

If they add one word, “Legacy“, under the product name, I would likely be adequately warned.

Barebones is great!

I use emacs but I don't know what you're referring to. Can you enlighten me please

I think maybe he meant chords.

If they add one word, “Legacy“, under the product name, I would likely be adequately warned.

Barebones is great!

> so this doesn't know about the major iCloud updates, or Apple Intelligence, or UI changes

I'm not familiar with macOS: Why would an application need to be updated for any of these? Were the existing APIs insufficient to integrate these?

I think maybe he meant chords.

What’s new in BBEdit 16?

There are more than a hundred new feature additions, changes, and refinements, including forward-looking foundational work which brings order-of-magnitude performance improvements in some parts of the product.

As always, we enthusiastically encourage you to read the complete change notes for BBEdit 16. (We spent a lot of time writing those notes, and hope you find the experience rewarding.)

To help catch up, there are also notes from any older versions which may have been released since the last time you looked.

Here are just a few of the notable things that are new or improved in BBEdit 16:

Expanded Shortcuts support

With an entire collection of brand new actions, powered by App Intents, expanded Shortcuts support now makes BBEdit’s powerful text transformations even more available to workflows outside of the application.

Search for text in images

Yes. You can now use BBEdit to find text in images. Yes. Multi-file search for text in images. Yes. Multi-file search for text in images using grep. Mmmhmmm. You didn’t rename the file, but you know the meme image included the word humid? You know you dropped it somewhere. We’ve got you.

Color Customizations for Projects and Notebooks

Help keep things straight using color as a guide, with the new ability to select a color scheme per-project (and per-Notebook). Choose from a variety of factory-supplied color schemes, or devise your very own.

AI Chat Worksheets improvements

AI worksheet users will now enjoy reduced response times, and the ability to watch results stream in.

…and much, much more

In addition to the features highlighted above, BBEdit 16 includes the following notable additions and changes (and many more):

Use of the W3C HTML5 syntax checker to improve syntax checking in HTML5 documents and help you keep up with evolving standards and guidelines;
Support for vi keyboard emulation, for basic navigation and editing;
Numerous quality-of-life improvements to the built-in Git support;
Additional configuration options in web site projects, including settings for “production” versus “testing” deployment locations;
Significant throughput improvements in the built-in SFTP file transfer engine;
A wide array of reworked internals, fine tuning and optimizations resulting in palpable performance improvements across multiple features and capabilities.

The detailed change notes contain complete information on what is new and changed in this version.

Upgrade Information

BBEdit 16 is a free upgrade for all licensed BBEdit 15 customers who purchased licenses on or after November 1, 2025.

BBEdit 16 is a paid upgrade for licensed customers: US$29.99 for BBEdit 15 customers (if purchased before November 1, 2025); US$39.99 for customers with BBEdit 14.6.9 or earlier.

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