Bluefish vs Lapce

Bluefish is a free, open-source desktop editor for programmers and web developers. It runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows, and supports more than 30 markup and programming languages. The editor is designed for websites, scripts, and programming code, with project support for working across multiple projects while restoring each project’s settings. Bluefish can load and save remote files through FTP, SFTP, HTTP, HTTPS, WebDAV, and CIFS via gvfs. Editing tools include regular-expression search and replace, snippets, unlimited undo and redo, crash recovery for modified documents, code folding, bracket and tag highlighting, autocompletion, and automatic tag closing for many languages. It can open more than 1,000 documents, with the features page reporting tests above 10,000 simultaneously. External programs and custom scripts can be integrated. The official Flatpak’s strict security blocks some system-tool and browser integrations.

Lapce is an open-source code editor written in Rust, available for Linux, macOS, and Windows. It uses a native graphical interface with GPU acceleration through Floem. For code intelligence, it combines Tree-sitter syntax highlighting with Language Server Protocol support for completion, diagnostics, and code actions. Developers can connect to a remote machine to work in an environment matching a production server, and the included terminal opens at the workspace path. The editor has built-in Vim-like modal editing and supports multiple cursors. Plugins can be written in any programming language that compiles to WASI, and the editor supports extensions. Downloads include Linux tar.gz builds for x86 and ARM, Windows system installer and portable x86 builds, and a universal macOS DMG. The product page displays version 0.4.2. Its documentation covers setup, settings, keybindings, modal editing, remote development, themes, terminal use, multiple cursors, syntax highlighting, and plugin development. The About page says Lapdev is maintained by the Lapce team and describes Lapce and Floem as open-source projects.