For general-purpose work, its easiest to use one of the text editors included with macOS.

If you want to use a graphical text editor, use TextEdit (in Launchpad).

Its a good introduction to using a command-line editor because it includes easy-to-follow on-screen help.

It has many powerful enhancements for moving around, searching, and editing documents.

Basic editing is simple to learn, and theres additional functionality to explore.

You can access most of the functionality by using keystroke combinations that trigger certain behavior.

If youre new to using the command line and dont anticipate using it much for editing, nano is probably your best choice.

If you expect to spend a lot of time using the command-line environment, its probably worth learning vim.

In the Terminal app on your Mac, invoke a command-line editor by typing the name of the editor, followed by a space and then the name of the file you want to open.

If you want to create a new file, type the editor name, followed by a space and the pathname of the file.

Heres an example of using nano to open a new file named myFile.conf in your Documents folder: nano DocumentsmyFile.conf See also Open or quit Terminal on Mac Open new Terminal windows and tabs on Mac Execute commands and run tools in Terminal on Mac Specify files and folders in Terminal on Mac.

Nice Command Editors For Java On Mac