From desktop notes to terminal files 2026-08-27
I like minimal text editors.
On Windows it was UltraEdit. Switching over to Mac, I landed on Atom: simple, friendly, the one.
Then the new macOS moved on without it. So long, old friend. After that it was
macOS Notes, which is great for jotting things down, right up until you wonder
where your actual .txt files live. Everything else felt too busy.
The obvious replacements each want something I would rather not give:
- Sublime — lovely. It also comes with an invoice: $99, too rich for my blood when Atom was already good enough.
- VS Code — it took over the job and brought a whole IDE along. That is a lot of editor when you do not really write code any more; the AI writes it now, and I just need to open a file and check a few things. It is a memory hog besides.
Meanwhile more of the day happens in a remote terminal, and the tools that are already there are not editors:
- more — shows you the file and nothing else. I use it constantly, but never for editing.
- vim — people rave about it, and the commands never quite stick between visits. I do not have a mode for a text editor in my head. The point is to edit.
- nano — always there, and always missing the one feature I reach for. It feels like it is still living in the 80s.
I set out to build a desktop app. Then openclaw and herdr pulled me back into a full TUI life, and I wanted an editor that belonged there.
tte sits exactly in that gap: a real editor — tabs, a mouse, find and replace, a file explorer — that lives in the terminal, opens instantly over SSH, and restores saved drafts. Nothing fancier. That is the whole idea.