So, we now know that the key we want to use in our script is CheckGrammarWithSpelling and the domain is com.apple.TextEdit. This method works fine for simple options but in some case you may have to resort to using diff on the full export of the defaults read file in order to easily find domain and keys impacted. Atom is a popular open-source code/text editor that works across several platforms such as Windows, Mac, or Linux. Atom is also considered to be one of the best Python code editors. Pros: Atom has color-coded syntax, a smart autocomplete feature, multiple panes, and a search-and-replace feature.
You can learn more about using Terminal and the shell on macOS in my my book: “macOS Terminal and Shell” — Thank you!
Most Terminal users will know that
will open the current working directory in a Finder window. (You, dear wonderful reader, know this because you read my previous post on Terminal-Finder Interaction.)
What Is The Default Text Editor In Mac. To edit a plain text file in Terminal, you can use a command-line text editor. For general-purpose work, it’s easiest to use one of the text editors included with macOS. If you want to use a graphical text editor, use TextEdit (in Launchpad). Otherwise, use one of the command-line editors included with. While many third party editors provide options for opening hidden files, if you don’t have one installed, you can easily open these hidden files using TextEdit which is a part of OS X. To open your.profile file, for example, start the Terminal application (searching for ‘terminal’ using Spotlight and clicking on the Terminal application. Open your terminal application - Applications - Utilities - Terminal.app Type the following or copy this into your terminal app and then press enter: chflags nohidden /Library/ Exit the terminal by typing in exit or just close it. After doing that, follow the path that I gave you above in my other reply.
However, the open command can do so much more.
Folders
Trivially, it cannot merely open the current working directory, but any path:
This can be used as a quick way to navigate to hidden directories.
You can also open multiple folders at once:
To clean up, you can option-click any close button in a Finder window to close all Finder windows. Or you can use the keyboard short cut ⌘⌥W.
Files
open can also open files. In general you can think of open as the command line equivalent of double-clicking a file or folder in Finder.
will open document.pdf in the current working directory with the default application for PDF files (usually Preview). You can use this against multiple files as well:
will open all screenshot files (if any) in a viewer in the default application (Preview).
Applications
If you have changed the default application that handles a file type or want to override the default application, you can use the -a option:
You can specify just the name of an application or the full path, i.e. /Applications/Preview.app. If you need to be specific, you can also specify an application’s bundle identifier with -b com.apple.Preview.
If you want to open a document but keep the application and the new document window in the background, use the -g option.
Text Editors
There are two interesting special cases for designating applications:
will open a file with TextEdit.
will open a file with the default application for text files (.txt file extensions) You can use the Finder Info panel to change the default application or, if you want more fine grained control use RCDefaultApp. In the default macOS config these are the same, but you can of course change the default app to your favourite text editor. (Many text editors, like BBEdit and Atom, have their own CLI tool, but if they don’t, you can use open -t instead.)
You can even pipe text into open with the -f option:
You can set your $EDITOR environment variable: EDITOR='open -tnW'; export EDITOR and then command lines tools that expect text from an editor, like git commit, will get the text from open and thus your default text editor instead. The -n option will actually open a new (sometimes second) instance of the application and the command line tool will resume when you quit this new instance. This a somewhat awkward workflow for Mac users. Many text editors provide a command line tool that may work better in these cases. For BBEdit the correct $EDITOR value is bbedit -w --resume.
Showing Files in Finder
If you are working on a file in Terminal and want to locate it in Finder, open can do better than just opening the enclosing folder. It can select a given file as well:
Will open a Finder window with the enclosing folder of helloworld.swift and select the file. (You can pass multiple files into open -R but it will only select the last file in the list.)
URLs
Finally there is one more useful thing you can open:
and, as always, you can use the -a option to override the default application:
Header files
For the sake of being complete: you can also open header files quickly with open. The -h option will search and open the header file for a given class. There is an additional -s option to choose an SDK:
If the search term is ambiguous open will list all the options.
The text file (.TXT) contains unformatted text with the .txt file extension (for example, macreports.txt). By unformatted formatting, this type of text file is a plain text file without any formatting and styling, for example, these documents do not contain bold text, italic text, images, colors, different font types, hyperlinks, tables, bulleted lists, etc but these documents contain clear text. You can create, open, and edit a TXT file on your Mac using a text editor. An example of a text editor is TextEdit, which is included with macOS.
Contents
- 1 Text file on Mac
Text file on Mac
A text file is one of the simplest file types you can create on a computer. It can be opened by many different programs and does not include any special formatting, fonts, images, or other embedded data. You can create one with any OS for desktop, laptop or smartphone on the market.
Still, there are differences between text files. Files can contain different character encodings, which indicate how other characters and symbols, such as emoji, are translated into numerical systems that computers use to store data. Common notations in the United States include ASCII and Unicode, but other notations are used elsewhere in different languages.
Most Mac text processing software and other tools can automatically detect file encryption, but if you use the wrong encoding, the file may be completely or partially illegible.
1. Using TextEdit
TextEdit is a very known and popular application that can be used to create and edit text files on every Mac. It is included with all versions of macOS and OS X. Follow the given steps to open and use TextEdit and create a text file on Mac
- TextEdit is a word editing and word processing tool that comes with your Mac, start the process by opening the TextEdit app on your Mac (Applications> TextEdit, or use Spotlight, press Command-Space bar, to search, and search for TextEdit).
- In the TextEdit application, choose File> Open. TextEdit has two formatting modes: (a) plain text (.txt file) and (b) rich text (.rtf file). The difference is that .txt mode will not allow formatting, while .rtf mode allows you to format such as adding images, colors, tables, etc.
- The default format is Rich Text Format. You can change this by going to TextEdit> Preferences and selecting Plain Text.
- You can also change the mode while editing your text by going to Format> Create Plain Text or Format> Create Rich Text. If you change the .rtf (rich text) file to a .txt (plain text) file, your document will lose all formatting options.
- Create and edit your text file
- Then go to File> Save to save your text file.
- Name your file and save it.
You can also create richer documents, and you can use iCloud pages or pages or similar apps. Another note is that text files are also known as flat files or ASCII files.
2. Create a file from the terminal application
If you are not afraid to be more technical, you can use the terminal application to create files.
Since the goal of creating a file after browsing to the folder in the Finder app, we start by enabling the Terminal app for the current Finder folder.
Here are the steps to enable Terminal:
- Open System Preferences either from LaunchPad or from Spotlight Search.
- To launch it from Spotlight Search, press Command-Space to bring it in. In the search bar, type System Preferences (autocomplete will complete so you don’t need to type the entire word).
- In System, click Keyboard Icon Preferences.
- Click the Shortcuts tab.
- In the right pane of the box, click Services.
- Search for “New Workstation in Folder” under the “Files and Folders” section.
- Make sure the checkbox is selected.
- Close the window.
- Now browse to the folder you need.
- Right-click the folder and the context menu will include the Services option at the bottom will appear. This option includes different commands available for the current folder. Click “New Station in Folder”, the option that we just enabled in System Preferences.
- A new terminal window opens with the current folder set to the folder you selected in the Finder application.
- In Terminal type: Touch
For example, if I wanted to create a new text file on Mac called MyTextFile.txt, I would type: Touch MyTextFile.txt
You should see a new file appear in the Finder, now you can right-click the file and either click Open which will open the file using the TextEdit application or select the Open With option. If you have some text editors like Atom or Microsoft Word, you can choose one using the Open With option.
3. Create Txt File on Mac using third party software
The problem of adding new files seems very common, and I don’t understand why Apple is reluctant to add the option to create new files to the right-click menu. And you know that many people are annoyed by this situation because there are many commercial applications created for the sole purpose of solving the problem.
One of them is a free tool called “New File List”. To install it, do the following:
- Start the App Store
- Type a new file list for free in the search bar
- In the search results, find the New File Menu app and click Get
- After installation, MacOS will request the extension
- Click the Open System Preferences button
- In the system, preferences enable a checkbox called Finder Extensions in the NewMenuFileFree section
The disadvantage of the free version of the app is that it only allows the creation of one type of file. If you’re mostly creating Word files, you can choose a Word document from templates, but in this case, you won’t be able to create text files from the context menu. The good news is that if you need more templates than you can install the paid version of the app.
Open Textedit From Terminal Macbook
Conclusion
There are many ways to add and create text (.TXT) files to your Mac. We have reviewed only 3 of them, but any solution should be sufficient and not difficult to implement.