TextMate

A general-purpose GUI text editor for macOS supporting tabs, macros, snippets, shell integration, and an extensible bundle system.

Primary category: Coding Tools

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About this data

This page reflects aggregated public online discussion, not statements of fact or our own opinion. Scores summarize the tone of relevant public mentions and carry the limitations described in our methodology. See how this is calculated.

Updated June 1, 2026

Overall Pulse Score

Pulse Score

-6 over this period

A 0-100 index summarizing the tone of 9 relevant public mentions gathered from public online communities across 5 weeks in the selected period. It measures online sentiment, not a rating of the product's quality.

Weekly Sentiment Trend

Pulse Score by week over the selected period. Each point is one complete week of mentions.

This week in public discussion

Discussion around TextMate during this recent period was light in volume but generally warm in tone, with commenters frequently invoking it as a point of favorable comparison against other editors. Several mentions praised its snippet system as genuinely influential, with one commenter describing it as a catalyst for switching to Mac entirely. A mixed note surfaced around expectations for ongoing maintenance and macOS compatibility, reflecting broader community sentiment about editor longevity rather than direct criticism of any single feature.

AI-generated summary of public online discussion during this period. It reflects the tone of that discussion, not facts about the product or our views.

Sentiment mix by week

How the tone of public discussion splits each week.

PositiveMixedNeutralNegative

Most-discussed praise

Strong features5

Compared to rivals3

Polished UI2

Easy to use2

Most-discussed complaints

No recurring complaint themes in this period.

Themes across the selected period, with mention counts.

Sample public mentions

Showing 5 of 9 analyzed public mentions in this period, with links to the original source. We do not reproduce full threads.

“> Textmate (and its revolutionary text-snippets) were the catalyst to my migrationHooo damn TextMate snippets, that brings back memories. Hard to convey how hyped I was to use these. That is also what drove me to Mac at that time. I remember writing hundreds of those snippets for...”

Hacker NewsJun 2, 2026

“I used vim before TextMate but TM has multiple cursors where vim has none, and I use that every day. The closest thing to that in vim is "repeat edit" but your edits need to be somewhat trivial to be repeat-able. Next is vim macros but that is too complicated already.”

Hacker NewsApr 30, 2026

“That was og sublime/textmate behavior that I grew to miss with vscode, so was pleasantly surprised to see it exists in Zed.”

Hacker NewsApr 29, 2026

“Yeah, that's not gonna hit. Non-native UI in an app that no Mac plain-text user asked for. I love Sublime, but TextMate was once king. There are already plenty of good options. I also love VIM for saving test to specific locations while I'm on the command line (I have an `sb` ali...”

Hacker NewsApr 29, 2026

“The software world is different today. People expect you to release security updates as vulnerabilities are discovered. They expect you to fix your application so that it works on the newest macOS that deprecated and broke the old APIs you used (or switch architectures). We expec...”

Hacker NewsMay 21, 2026

Deeper analysis

Nostalgia and competitor comparison dominated the conversation, with commenters more likely to reference TextMate's historical significance than current use.
Sentiment direction was volatile and hard to read clearly, driven by very low mention volume where a single comment could swing weekly scores sharply.
Opinion was divided on current relevance, with some commenters praising its native Mac character while others implied the lightweight editor niche is now crowded and settled.
No organized complaint themes emerged, but indirect criticism around legacy software maintenance expectations ran through several mentions.

Praise theme	Mentions
Strong features	5
Compared to rivals	3
Polished UI	2
Easy to use	2

Discussion around TextMate over the past four weeks was thin in volume but carried a notably mixed and historically colored tone. With only a handful of mentions captured in the window, the conversation leaned heavily on nostalgia and comparative framing rather than active user feedback about current usage. Several commenters invoked TextMate as a historical reference point, with one recalling the product's pioneering text-snippet system as a formative moment that shaped their relationship with the Mac platform. This fond retrospective framing dominated the praise side of discussion, giving the sentiment a warm but distinctly backward-looking quality.

On the critical side, while no formal complaint themes were logged, the sample mentions hinted at underlying skepticism about legacy editors in general. One commenter articulated what appeared to be a broadly shared expectation around software maintenance, security updates, and macOS compatibility, framing it as a standard the market now demands. The tone here was pointed but not directed exclusively at TextMate, reading more as a contextual critique of older tools as a category.

The score trajectory showed noticeable volatility for such a low-volume window. After opening at a moderately positive level, sentiment dipped sharply in the middle weeks before spiking to a strongly positive reading in the final data point, driven by just a single mention. This pattern suggested that individual comments were carrying outsized weight, making the trajectory less a reliable trend and more a reflection of which specific conversation happened to mention the product that week.

Opinion was divided most visibly around TextMate's current relevance. Some commenters positioned it favorably against newer lightweight competitors, citing its native Mac feel as a genuine differentiator. Others implicitly questioned whether legacy reputation translates to present-day utility, with the market-saturation framing suggesting the window for certain editor niches may have already closed.

AI-generated summary of public online discussion during this period. It reflects the tone of that discussion, not facts about the product or our views.