Aquamacs Emacs icon

Aquamacs Emacs

Aquamacs Emacs is a free open-source text editor and command-line interface for macOS based on GNU Emacs. It has an intuitive, Aqua-inspired graphical user interface while providing advanced text editing features of Emacs.

What is Aquamacs Emacs?

Aquamacs Emacs is a free and open-source text editor and command-line interface application for macOS operating systems. It is based on the popular GNU Emacs text editor but is customized with a native Mac graphical user interface and integrated into the macOS desktop environment.

Aquamacs provides the powerful and extensible text editing capabilities of Emacs in an easy-to-use package for macOS. Like Emacs, it supports extensive text editing and formatting features, flexible customization and scripting capabilities, and advanced programming tooling. However, its user interface takes cues from macOS Aqua design guidelines for a native look, feel, and behavior.

Key features of Aquamacs Emacs include:

  • Native macOS menu bars, dock icons, keyboard shortcuts and dialogs
  • Single document interface modeless UI
  • Support for macOS services and AppleScript integration
  • Syntax highlighting for over 50 programming languages
  • Robust extendability and customization options
  • Interoperability with standard Emacs configuration files

Although optimized for macOS, Aquamacs Emacs retains full compatibility with GNU Emacs allowing portable configurations across platforms. It can serve as a useful alternative to the standard Emacs for macOS package for those desiring deeper desktop integration with a familiar Aqua interface.

The Best Aquamacs Emacs Alternatives

Top Apps like Aquamacs Emacs

Visual Studio Code, Sublime Text, Notepad++, Geany, Eclipse, GNU nano, Kate, VSCodium, GNU Emacs, Active@ Disk Editor are some alternatives to Aquamacs Emacs.

Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code is a source code editor developed by Microsoft that includes support for debugging, embedded Git control, syntax highlighting, intelligent code completion, snippets, and code refactoring. It's free, open-source, and available for Windows, Linux, and macOS.As a lightweight but powerful code editor, VS Code gives developers a...

Sublime Text

Sublime Text is a sophisticated text editor for code, markup, and prose. It has a clean, intuitive, and unobtrusive user interface with excellent performance. Sublime Text is highly customizable and extensible with Python plugins. Key features include:Fast, lightweight, and responsive user interfaceCross-platform availability for Linux, Windows, and macOSPowerful search...

Notepad++

Notepad++ is a popular open-source text and source code editor for Windows. It supports a wide variety of programming languages and markup languages with syntax highlighting, code folding, macro abilities and more. Some key features of Notepad++ include:Syntax highlighting for over 100 programming languages like C++, Java, HTML, XML and...

Geany

Geany is a lightweight, fast, and minimalist cross platform text editor targeted at developers and power users. It has support for syntax highlighting for over 150 programming and markup languages including C, Java, HTML, LaTeX, CSS, Python, Perl, and more.Some of the key features of Geany include:Syntax highlighting for...

Eclipse

Eclipse is a multi-language software development environment comprising an integrated development environment (IDE) and an extensible plug-in system. It is written mostly in Java and can be used to develop applications in Java and other programming languages including C/C++, Python, PHP, and more.Some key features of Eclipse include...

GNU nano

GNU nano is a popular open source text editor for Unix-like operating systems. It is designed to be simple and intuitive to use, making it a good choice for beginners or casual users who just need to make quick text edits.Some key features of nano include:Easy to navigate...

Kate

Kate is a free and open-source text editor that provides advanced features for programmers and developers. It is available on Linux, UNIX, Windows and macOS platforms.Some key features of Kate include:Syntax highlighting for over 200 file formats including C, C++, Java, HTML, XML, PHP, JavaScript, Perl and moreCode folding...

VSCodium

VSCodium is an open source, community-driven alternative to Microsoft's popular Visual Studio Code editor. It is based on the same codebase as Visual Studio Code, but stripped of any Microsoft branding, telemetry or tracking. Just like VS Code, VSCodium is a free, cross-platform source code editor with support for debugging...

GNU Emacs

GNU Emacs is a powerful, customizable, open source text editor and more. At its core is an interpreter for Emacs Lisp, a dialect of the Lisp programming language with extensions to support text editing. This extensibility allows Emacs to provide far more than your average text editor.Beyond text editing...

Active@ Disk Editor

Active@ Disk Editor is a powerful, easy-to-use disk editing and data recovery software application. It provides a comprehensive set of tools for low-level disk editing and data recovery operations.With Active@ Disk Editor, users can access the raw contents of physical disks for viewing and editing purposes. This allows for...