Bluefish vs Pulsar
Bluefish
bluefish.openoffice.nlPulsar
pulsar-edit.devSide by side
| Figure | Bluefish | Pulsar |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Editor Software | 8.8 (#2) | 7.8 (#25) |
| Spec score · Text Editors | 8.7 (#10) | 8.1 (#38) |
| Spec score · Code editors | 8.5 (#12) | 8.3 (#16) |
| Customization options | Bluefish is highly customizable and includes customization tips. | Users can customize keybindings, per-language settings, styles, and other appearance or behavior through configuration files. |
| Editor type | desktop | desktop |
| Extension support | Yes | Yes |
| Platforms | The download page lists Linux packages and installers for Windows 64-bit and Mac OSX; it also provides a Linux Flatpak. | Windows,macOS,Linux |
Plans
In their own words
Bluefish
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.
Pulsar
Pulsar is a free, open-source desktop text editor for Windows, macOS, and Linux. It is a community-led fork of the discontinued Atom editor, with a stated aim of continuing and improving an open, hackable editor. Its package manager supports finding and installing packages or creating them. Language server integration provides autocompletion, smart navigation, and other IDE features. A filesystem browser can open an individual file, one project, or multiple projects in the same window. Editing features include multiple cursors, snippets, semantic selections, code folding, and syntax highlighting. Configuration files let users adjust keybindings, language-specific settings, styles, and other aspects of appearance or behavior. Git tools can switch branches, stage code, resolve merge conflicts, and show open GitHub pull requests. A bundled updater detects when a newer version is available. The current release page lists Windows 10 or later, macOS 10.15 or later, and Linux with glibc 2.31 or later. Pulsar says its editor collects no user information and sends nothing to remote servers; backend troubleshooting logs include IP and user-agent details and are deleted after 30 days.