gedit ( or ) is a

text editor A text editor is a type of computer program that edits plain text. Such programs are sometimes known as "notepad" software (e.g. Windows Notepad). Text editors are provided with operating systems and software development packages, and can be us ...

designed for the

GNOME A gnome is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature. Its characte ...

desktop environment In computing, a desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system that share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes described as a graphica ...

. It was GNOME's default text editor and part of the GNOME Core Applications until GNOME version 42 in March 2022, which changed the default text editor to

GNOME Text Editor GNOME Text Editor is the default text editor for the GNOME desktop environment. The program is a free and open-source graphical text editor included as part of the GNOME Core Applications. GNOME Text Editor has been the default text editor for G ...

. Designed as a general-purpose text editor, gedit emphasizes simplicity and ease of use, with a clean and simple

GUI The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

, according to the philosophy of the GNOME project. It includes tools for editing

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...

and structured text such as

markup language Markup language refers to a text-encoding system consisting of a set of symbols inserted in a text document to control its structure, formatting, or the relationship between its parts. Markup is often used to control the display of the document ...

s. It is

free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

under the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the Four Freedoms (Free software), four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was th ...

version 2 or later. gedit is also available for

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

and at one time had version for

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

, but as of May 2020 was no longer available. By July 2017, gedit was not being maintained by any developers, but in August 2017 two developers volunteered to commence work on it again.

Features

gedit includes syntax highlighting via GtkSourceView for various program code and text markup formats including

MediaWiki MediaWiki is a free and open-source wiki software. It is used on Wikipedia and almost all other Wikimedia websites, including Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata; these sites define a large part of the requirement set for MediaWiki ...

. gedit also has GUI tabs for editing multiple files. Tabs can be moved between various windows by the user. It can edit remote files using

GVfs GVfs (abbreviation for GNOME virtual file system) is GNOME's userspace virtual filesystem designed to work with the I/O abstraction of GIO, a library available in GLib since version 2.15.1. It installs several modules that are automatically use ...

libraries; (

GnomeVFS GnomeVFS (short for GNOME Virtual File System) was an abstraction layer of the GNOME platform for the reading, writing and execution of files. Before GNOME 2.22 GnomeVFS was primarily used by the appropriate versions of Nautilus file manager (rena ...

is now deprecated). It supports a full undo and redo system as well as search and replace. Other typical code oriented features include line numbering, bracket matching, text wrapping, current line highlighting, automatic indentation and automatic file backup."gedit: a powerful, underrated text editor for everybody", ''Free Software Magazine''
15 February 2008 The features of gedit include multi language spell checking via Enchant and a flexible plugin system allowing the addition of new features, for example snippets and integration with external applications including a

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (pro ...

Bash Bash or BASH may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Bash!'' (Rockapella album), 1992 * ''Bash!'' (Dave Bailey album), 1961 * '' Bash: Latter-Day Plays'', a dramatic triptych * ''BASH!'' (role-playing game), a 2005 superhero game * "Bash" ('' ...

terminal. A number of plugins are included in gedit itself, with more plugins in the gedit-plugins package and online. Since version 3.20 gedit uses gspell for spell checking. gedit has an optional side pane displaying the list of open files and (in a different tab of the side pane) a file browser. It also has an optional bottom pane with a Python console and (using gedit-plugins) terminal. gedit automatically detects when an open file is modified on disk by another application and offers to reload that file. Using a plugin (in gedit-plugins package), gedit can save and load sessions, which are lists of currently open tabs. gedit supports

printing Printing is a process for mass reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest non-paper products involving printing include cylinder seals and objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Cylinders of Nabonidus. The ea ...

, including print preview and printing to

PostScript PostScript (PS) is a page description language in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm. It is a dynamically typed, concatenative programming language. It was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock, Charles Geschke, Doug Br ...

and

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

files. Printing options include text font, and page size, orientation, margins, optional printing of page headers and line numbers, as well as syntax highlighting. In late 2013 and early 2014 the application received major upgrades for Gnome 3.12, with a new, cleaner user interface and code base improvements to make it work better with other desktop interfaces, such as

Unity Unity may refer to: Buildings * Unity Building, Oregon, Illinois, US; a historic building * Unity Building (Chicago), Illinois, US; a skyscraper * Unity Buildings, Liverpool, UK; two buildings in England * Unity Chapel, Wyoming, Wisconsin, US; a h ...

Valencia Valencia ( va, València) is the capital of the Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Valencian Community, Valencia and the Municipalities of Spain, third-most populated municipality in Spain, with 791,413 inhabitants. It is ...

is a gedit plugin that turns gedit into a lightweight IDE for Vala.

Architecture

Being part of the GNOME Core Applications, gedit 3 uses the GTK 3.x and GNOME 3.x libraries. The GNOME integration includes drag and drop to and from

GNOME Files GNOME Files, formerly and internally known as Nautilus, is the official file manager for the GNOME desktop. Nautilus was originally developed by Eazel with many luminaries from the tech world including Andy Hertzfeld (Apple), chief architect for ...

. gedit uses the GNOME help system for documentation. It also uses virtual file system and GNOME printing framework. In December 2008, gedit binaries were made available for

and

. The last version for Windows 32-bit was 2.30.1, released in 2014. Standalone releases for 64-bit Windows continued, with Version 3.20.1 released in 2016. Current versions of gedit (3.0+) for Windows are also available through MSYS2 and can be installed via the built-in Pacman package manager.

References

External links

* *
Download 32-bit for Windows

Download 64-bit for Windows
{{GNOME Free software programmed in C Free software programmed in Python Free text editors GNOME Core Applications Linux text editors MacOS text editors Notepad replacements Software using the GPL license Text editors that use GTK Unix text editors Windows text editors

Features

Architecture

See also

References

External links