Nib Documentation

Welcome to the Nib documentation. Nib is a lightweight, fast-startup plain-text editor with syntax highlighting — the same niche as TextEdit or Notepad++, not an IDE. No plugins, no LSP, no project trees.

Getting Started

Nib requires macOS 11.0 (Big Sur) or later, and runs natively on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs (universal binary).

  1. Download Nib from the product page
  2. Unzip the downloaded file
  3. Drag Nib.app to your Applications folder
  4. Launch Nib from Applications or Spotlight

The app is signed and notarized by Apple, so there are no Gatekeeper warnings.

You can also open one or more files directly from the command line, if you’ve placed nib on your PATH (see Command Line):

nib notes.txt
nib main.rs config.toml

Each named file opens in its own tab, alongside whatever your last session had open — closing and reopening Nib always brings back your unsaved work, including untitled tabs that were never saved to a file.

Nib also registers with macOS as a viewer/editor for plain text files, SVGs, and common image formats, so it shows up in Finder’s “Open With” menu.

Key Features at a Glance

  • Tabs & Windows — multi-tab editing, drag-to-reorder, pinning, Split Right, and a VS Code-style tab context menu
  • Editing & Navigation — Find & Replace, Go to Line, auto-indent, line-comment toggling, word wrap
  • Syntax Highlighting — 20+ languages, light/dark theme choices, togglable for very large files
  • CSV/TSV Table View — an opt-in spreadsheet-style grid for delimited files
  • Markdown Preview — inline, side-by-side split, or a live mirror in its own tab
  • Image & SVG Viewing — open PNG/JPEG/GIF/BMP/WebP and SVG files directly
  • Preferences — fonts, themes, appearance, window behavior, and more
  • Keyboard Shortcuts — the full shortcut reference
  • Updates — how in-app auto-update and the nib shell command work

Nib also has crash-resilient buffer persistence: every open tab, saved or not, is cached in the background, so a crash or force-quit never loses your work.

What Nib Is Not

Nib deliberately doesn’t do everything a full IDE does — no plugin system, no LSP-based autocomplete or go-to-definition, no project/workspace file tree, no git integration, no vim/emacs keybindings. It’s meant to open fast and get out of your way for reading and editing plain text and code, not to replace your IDE.

The CSV/TSV table view, Markdown preview, and image/SVG viewing are deliberate, narrow exceptions to that rule — each is opt-in, and each still keeps the underlying file as plain text (or, for images, a dedicated read-only viewer) rather than turning Nib into a general-purpose app.

Documentation Pages

  • Tabs & Windows — Multi-tab editing, drag-to-reorder, pinning, Split Right, and the tab context menu.
  • Editing & Navigation — Find & Replace, Go to Line, auto-indent, line comments, word wrap, and drag-and-drop.
  • Syntax Highlighting — Supported languages, theme choices, and the large-file performance toggle.
  • CSV/TSV Table View — An opt-in spreadsheet-style grid for editing CSV and TSV files.
  • Markdown Preview — Inline, side-by-side split, and mirror-tab preview modes for Markdown files.
  • Image & SVG Viewing — Opening PNG, JPEG, GIF, BMP, WebP, and SVG files directly in Nib.
  • Preferences — Fonts, themes, appearance, window behavior, and the Preferences window.
  • Keyboard Shortcuts — The full keyboard shortcut reference for Nib on macOS.
  • Command Line — Opening files from the terminal with the nib command.
  • Updates — How Nib checks for and installs updates.