A small full-screen terminal text editor written in plain C (kilo-style, after kilo by Salvatore Sanfilippo), with no dependencies beyond the POSIX standard library.
tinyedit brings the familiar ease of a desktop text editor to the terminal. It uses the terminal's alternate screen while open, then returns to the main screen on exit with the shell prompt and scrollback intact.
Traditional terminal editors can require learning modal editing (Vim),
memorizing non-standard key sequences (Emacs), or working around limited
navigation and selection (Nano). tinyedit reduces that friction with familiar
shortcuts such as Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, Ctrl-Z, and Ctrl-F, Shift+Arrow text
selection, and optional mouse support for clicking and scrolling.
- Why it exists
- Features at a glance
- Homebrew
- Build and build identification
- Usage and installation
- Quick reference
- Markdown editing and navigation
- Documentation
- Project status
- Author and license
I kept building tinyedit because I became convinced that a terminal editor could be simple enough to use every day. While implementing it, I paid close attention to carrying over the mouse gestures and keyboard shortcuts people already know from desktop text editors and word processors. The goal is not to invent another editing language: it is to make opening a terminal file feel immediately familiar.
There is still room to grow, such as adding multiple buffers to keep several files open in one session. Future additions will be evaluated carefully to keep the editor simple and focused.
Python source in tinyedit, with line numbers, soft wrapping, file statistics, and configurable syntax colors.
tinyedit is intentionally small, but it is meant to be comfortable enough for real editing rather than just demonstrating how a terminal works.
| Area | What you get |
|---|---|
| Editing | Familiar cursor movement, word jumps, selection, cut/copy/paste, automatic indentation, block indent/outdent with Tab, configurable pair and XML/HTML tag closing, matching-bracket highlighting, and an undo history of up to 2,000 steps (200 by default). |
| Files | Start an empty document with File → New / Ctrl-N, open or switch files without restarting tinyedit, complete file paths with Tab, start a named file before it exists, save atomically, and recover named documents from optional automatic backups after a crash. |
| Sidebar | Browse a persistent filesystem tree with keyboard or mouse, expand folders lazily, change its root, and open files with protection for unsaved edits. |
| Search | Incremental literal or POSIX regular-expression search, match navigation, and interactive search and replace. |
| Syntax highlighting | Built-in support for C/C++, Python, Shell, JavaScript/TypeScript, Markdown, HTML/XML, CSS, and JSON, including function names. Simple C-like languages and HTML-based templates (Nunjucks, Jinja, Liquid, Twig) can be added with a user configuration file; ready-made ones ship in syntax-configs/. |
| Markdown | Optional live preview, heading/Pandoc/Obsidian navigation, local @id references, image opening in the default desktop app, and language highlighting inside fenced code blocks. |
| UTF-8 | Cursor movement, deletion, display width, wrapping, and character counts understand combining marks, CJK text, and multi-code-point emoji. |
| Long lines | Lines wrap at the terminal edge, preferably at word boundaries. Navigation follows the visible wrapped rows, without imposing a fixed line-length limit. |
| Clipboard | Uses the native macOS clipboard or the available Wayland/X11 clipboard tool directly, without sending commands through a shell. |
| Terminal input | Fast bracketed paste, optional mouse selection and scrolling, and key-sequence handling for common macOS and Linux terminals. Wheel scrolling keeps the viewport in place during pointer movement even when the cursor is off-screen. |
| Menus | A persistent menu bar with TinyEdit, File, Edit, View, and Help menus; keyboard and optional mouse navigation; shortcuts beside commands; and checked View settings. |
| Interface | Optional Markdown live preview with cursor expansion, line numbers and top bar, visible whitespace, file statistics, in-editor help, and a settings panel. |
| Configuration | Settings live in ~/.tinyeditrc; tabs, wrapping, mouse behavior, cursor shape and blinking, interface elements, and editing assists can all be changed from F2. |
| Colors and themes | ANSI by default or optional RGB with validated hex colors, previews, separate palettes, and One Dark plus all four Catppuccin flavors selected from one Colors page. |
| Build identification | The same release and source build identifier appears in --version, the startup splash, and F3. |
| Portability | One C99 binary and no third-party runtime libraries. The supported targets are POSIX systems such as macOS and Linux. |
| Testing | Syntax, settings, backup, terminal-input, key-binding, and very-long-line behavior are covered by make test; sample files are included for hands-on checks. |
Settings can be changed from the built-in F2 panel or by editing
~/.tinyeditrc, which tinyedit creates automatically on first launch.
The project also remains an exploration of how terminal interfaces work from scratch: raw mode, ANSI escape sequences, input decoding, and manual redraw, without reaching for a TUI framework. Its first prototype used linenoise for a command-driven line editor. The current version is a true full-screen editor with a freely moving cursor; linenoise remains in the repository for historical reference but is not a build dependency.
If you use Homebrew on macOS or Linux, install tinyedit with
brew install robertobissanti/tinyedit/tinyedit
make # produces the bin/tinyedit binary
make clean # removes itNeeds only a C99 compiler and a POSIX system (macOS or Linux).
bin/tinyedit --version, the startup splash and F3 display the same complete
version and build identifier. Git builds use g plus twelve commit digits;
local source changes add -dirty-s<checksum>. Archives without Git use
source-s<checksum>. The POSIX checksum covers source/header files, the
Makefile and build generator; it is not cryptographic and collisions are possible.
Identical sources retain the same ID; compiler, flags and platform are not encoded.
The generated header is checked on every make, without requiring make clean.
The application is rebuilt each time, including on make implementations with
coarse timestamp resolution; unchanged generated header content is retained.
Packagers may override it with make BUILD_ID=package-0.3.9-r1 (up to 120
letters, digits, dots, underscores, plus signs or hyphens). The packager owns
the accuracy and uniqueness of this override.
bin/tinyedit [file-or-folder]
bin/tinyedit --version # print version and build ID without starting the editorPass a folder to start an empty unnamed document with that folder as the visible sidebar root and the base for relative Open/Save paths. Keyboard focus starts in the document.
The build output stays in bin/tinyedit without modifying your shell
configuration. To run tinyedit from any directory, install or symlink it
into a location in your PATH, such as /usr/local/bin:
make
sudo make install PREFIX=/usr/localFor an installation without administrator privileges, use
make install PREFIX="$HOME/.local" and add ~/.local/bin to your PATH.
A permission error for /usr/local/bin is an installation failure; the compiled
binary remains available as bin/tinyedit.
make install installs the binary, shipped color schemes, syntax definitions,
and documentation. Shared resources live in $(PREFIX)/share/tinyedit (by
default /usr/local/share/tinyedit), so sudo never writes into a user's home.
Personal themes and syntax definitions in ~/.tinyedit/ take precedence.
Help → Documentation uses the shared guides unless personal guides are installed.
Use make install-binary for just the executable. For a custom prefix, pass the
same PREFIX when building and installing: the resource path is compiled into
the binary. Packagers can override DATADIR and stage files with DESTDIR;
DESTDIR is never part of the runtime path.
These optional commands still install personal copies; run them without sudo:
make install-resources # color schemes + syntax definitions, never overwrites
make install-docs # personal guides for Help → Documentation| Key | Action |
|---|---|
Ctrl-N / Ctrl-O |
New document / open file |
Ctrl-S / F4 |
Save / Save as |
Ctrl-W / Ctrl-Q |
Close document / quit, with unsaved-change protection |
Ctrl-Z / Ctrl-Y |
Undo / redo |
Ctrl-F |
Find and replace |
Ctrl-E |
Show or hide the file tree |
Alt+Enter |
Follow the link or local Markdown reference under the cursor |
F1 / F2 / F3 |
Help / Settings / Info |
F10 |
Open the menu |
F2 includes cursor shape and blinking, editing preferences, and a Colors page with ANSI/RGB palettes and live previews. One Dark and all four official Catppuccin RGB palettes (Latte, Frappé, Macchiato and Mocha) are included. The Colors page always shows the current preset name (or Custom); Left/Right selects a preset directly in the draft, without an extra confirmation. The RGB presets use distinct yellow parentheses and brackets. Markdown link/image delimiters and Pandoc anchor markers use a separate JSON-key color, distinct from ordinary parentheses and brackets. Link labels and destinations share that color and are underlined in styled source as well as live preview. Strings and comments retain their own colors. Each theme gives Markdown H1–H6 six independent colors, with matching lightly tinted RGB backgrounds, editable in Colors; older palettes inherit the preprocessor color until updated. Save all Settings with F2/Ctrl-S. ANSI is the default; RGB output is an explicit choice. Synthwave Pro is also available as a dark RGB adaptation of Roberto Bissanti’s Obsidian theme. Theme sources and adaptation limits are listed in the palette guide. See the settings and themes guide for installation and configuration.
Enable View → Markdown live preview, or the same option in F2, to hide paired bold/italic markers and display inline links as underlined labels. Bold and italic reveal their source at the cursor; links enter source editing from either boundary and remain editable while you type the destination. The original file bytes are preserved. Live preview works with syntax highlighting on or off and is off by default. See the Markdown display guide.
Use Alt+Enter or a mouse double-click to follow a link. With mouse support
and live preview enabled, hover changes a compact link's color and one click
opens it. Relative text-file links open inside tinyedit with the usual
save/discard/cancel protection. Web and mailto: links open the configured
browser or mail composer; no mail is sent by tinyedit.
tinyedit asks before opening a web or mail link in an external application.
Markdown navigation supports heading slugs, explicit Pandoc IDs on headings, spans, images and fenced Divs, and Obsidian block IDs. For example:
[Settings](#settings-and-appearance)
[Dati](#dati)
[Tabella](#^tabella)
[Dati in un altro file](altro.md#dati)
## Misurazioni {#dati}
[Risultato]{#risultato}
Riferimenti locali: @dati e [@risultato].
Un paragrafo identificato. ^paragrafoExplicit Pandoc IDs take precedence over heading slugs and match exactly;
#^id searches only Obsidian blocks. Standalone Obsidian markers associate
with the preceding block using separating blank lines. Missing or duplicate
targets produce red errors; unresolved @id citations remain text. Code is
excluded from navigation. See the target examples and limits
for tables, lists, quoted blocks, namespaces, UTF-8 and encoded fragments.
In an image such as {#fig:diagramma}, the
source path opens in the default desktop application using open on macOS or
xdg-open on Linux. Hover and single-click the visible path in live preview,
or use the usual link gestures. Only non-executable raster image files with a
matching file header are offered for opening, after confirmation; SVG is
excluded. The Markdown document and unsaved changes stay
open. A link to #fig:diagramma instead jumps to the image's source in the
document. See image navigation.
Fenced blocks with a language tag, such as an opening line ```c or
~~~python, use the existing language highlighter, including installed
syntax definitions. Keywords, numbers, strings and multiline comments get
their normal syntax colors. Unknown or omitted languages and inline code keep
a uniform code style. See the fenced-code guide
for aliases, Pandoc language classes and examples. tinyedit navigates and edits
the source; it does not execute code or Pandoc, number figures or render images.
Wheel scrolling leaves the cursor stationary and keeps the viewport where you scrolled while the pointer moves or hovers over links. Keyboard input, a text click, dragging or an anchor jump restores cursor-following.
make install includes the guides and their linked resources. Open
Help → Documentation inside tinyedit to read them. Optional personal guides
installed with make install-docs at ~/.tinyedit/docs/README.md take precedence
over the shared index in $(PREFIX)/share/tinyedit/docs/README.md.
Use Alt+Enter on a link, or double-click it
with mouse support enabled. Double-clicking ordinary text selects a word.
- User guide: full shortcuts, file operations, sidebar, mouse, menus, editing, search and backup recovery.
- Settings, colors and themes: the shared F2 draft, ANSI/RGB, presets, cursor and line endings.
- Syntax highlighting: supported languages, Markdown, startup dotfiles and custom syntax definitions.
- Development and internals: code layout, memory behavior and function documentation.
- Contributing and tests and benchmarks.
Browse the documentation index for all guides and preset files.
See IDEAS.md for future features not yet prioritized, and
the repository issues and pull requests for publicly discussed work.
Copyright © 2026 Roberto Bissanti roberto.bissanti@gmail.com.
Released under the MIT license; see LICENSE. The code
ported from linenoise (src/utf8.c/inc/utf8.h, plus
src/linenoise.c/inc/linenoise.h vendored for historical reference,
see above) stays
under Salvatore Sanfilippo and Pieter Noordhuis's original BSD
2-Clause license; see
LICENSE-THIRD-PARTY.
Catppuccin palette data is distributed under its MIT license; see
LICENSE-THIRD-PARTY for its copyright and notice.