LeCoqRoti
Twenty-three languages light up in the sidebar the moment you open a file. Nova recognises CoffeeScript, YAML, TypeScript and two dozen others out of the box, so syntax highlighting is rarely something you need to configure first.
Rewritten text engine: polished type at every size
The custom text layout engine — rewritten during the beta phase — gives type a polished, even texture at every size. Open the minimap from the editor's top-right corner for a bird's-eye view of long files; it makes scrolling through a sprawling JSON or Markdown document surprisingly pleasant. Nearby, bracket and tag-pair matching flickers into view exactly when you need it, keeping nested structures legible without adding noise.
Extend: the built-in browser
Intelligent autocompletion covers the core languages, but the real expansion lives in the extension browser. From there you can add language servers, themes and task runners without leaving the window. It is a natural second stop after you have grown comfortable with the editor's own rhythm.
Multiple cursors: place extras with Cmd-click
Beyond the minimap and bracket matching, a handful of quieter touches shape the daily rhythm. The multiple-cursor system responds to standard shortcuts — place an extra caret with Cmd-click, then type to edit several lines at once. What is less obvious is that Nova preserves your cursor positions across undo and redo, so correcting a bulk edit never throws you back to a single caret. Holding Option while dragging vertically creates a rectangular selection, useful for trimming leading whitespace from pasted logs.
Task scripts are not limited to the toolbar. You can assign any task its own keyboard shortcut, and tasks can chain: one script might lint a SCSS file, then hand the result to a second that copies the output to a build folder. The custom text layout engine, which replaced Apple's default during beta, eliminates a whole class of redraw glitches — characters never wobble or ghost when you resize the window quickly, a detail you stop noticing after the first week but would miss immediately if it returned.
React component tree: JSX, TypeScript and CSS in tabs
Imagine a front-end developer starting a day on a React project. She opens the component tree in Nova: JSX, TypeScript and CSS files sit side by side in tabs, each highlighted correctly without extensions. She sets three cursors across a half-dozen import statements and edits them simultaneously. A task she wrote weeks ago runs Prettier and ESLint on save, triggered by a shortcut she barely thinks about. When a designer sends revised colours, she opens the minimap, scrolls directly to the :root block in a long stylesheet, and swaps the values. The edits are committed by mid-morning; the editor never interrupted her flow with a redraw stutter or a misplaced bracket highlight.
Comparisons: where Nova sits among peers
Measured against Sublime Text, Nova feels more Mac-native: its text layout engine is custom, where Sublime relies on system rendering, and Nova's task system is built in rather than added through packages. Sublime's package ecosystem is larger, but Nova's extension browser is curated and easier to navigate for someone who wants a language server quickly. Beside BBEdit, Nova is visually lighter — BBEdit carries decades of interface density that some writers prefer, while Nova pares back to essentials. BBEdit's grep-fu and text-processing power remain unmatched, but Nova answers with smoother tag-pair handling and a minimap that suits long JavaScript or XML files. Compared to CotEditor, which is lean and open-source, Nova is deeper: multiple cursors, task automation and the extension browser give it a professional toolset that CotEditor deliberately avoids.
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