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:

nib notes.txt
nib main.rs config.toml

Each file opens in its own tab, alongside whatever your last session had open — closing and reopening Nib always brings back your unsaved work.

Key Features

  • Multi-Tab Editing — work on several files at once, drag to reorder tabs
  • Syntax Highlighting — Rust, Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, JSON, Markdown, and plain text, auto-detected from the file extension. Can be turned off in Preferences for very large files, where it has a real performance cost
  • Find & Replace — fast in-buffer search with match highlighting
  • Line Numbers — toggleable, wrap-aware
  • Font Selection — pick from monospace fonts already installed on your Mac
  • Crash Recovery — unsaved work, including in untitled tabs that were never saved to a file, survives an app restart or crash
  • Recent Files — quick access to files you’ve opened before
  • Light & Dark Themes — follows your OS appearance setting automatically

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.