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Atom
Powerful Text Editor
4.4
(765)
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Atom Reviews & Product Details

Atom Overview
What is Atom?

Atom is an open-source text editor used by software developers. The platform is free and features tools that allow cross-platform editing, code autocomplete and Git integration. With Atom, developers can streamline workflows while ensuring better collaboration with team members with the goal of creating high-quality software.

Company GitHub, Inc.
Year founded 2008
Company size 501-1000 employees
Headquarters San Francisco, California, United States
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Ask Questions about Atom
What Atom is best for?
How does Atom compare to Lightkey?
What are the pros and cons of Atom?
Atom Product Details
Capabilities
API
CLI
OSS
Segment
Small Business
Mid Market
Enterprise
Deployment Cloud / SaaS / Web-Based, Desktop Linux, Desktop Mac, Desktop Windows
Training Documentation
Languages English
Atom Features
Auto-completion
Bracket Matching
Built-in Terminal
Cloud Sync
Code Folding
Code Formatting
Code Snippets
Customizable Themes
Diff Tool
Drag and Drop Editing
Error Checking
File Explorer
Hex Editor
Keyboard Shortcuts
Line Numbering
Linter Integration
Live Preview
Macros
Markdown Support
Minimap
Multi-Cursor Editing
Multiple Language Support
Plugin/Extension Support
Regular Expression Support
Search and Replace
Spell Check
Split View
Syntax Highlighting
Text Wrapping
Version Control Integration
Atom Media
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Atom 1
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Atom Screenshots
Disclaimer
Our research is curated from diverse authoritative sources and meant to offer general advice. We don’t guarantee that our suggestions will work best for each use-case, so consider your unique needs when choosing products and services. Feel free to share your feedback.
Last updated: February 12, 2025
Atom Logo
765 Atom Reviews
4.4 out of 5
Small Business (50 or fewer emp.)
Dec 20, 2016
 Source
Overall Rating:
5.0
Eric A. avatar
Eric A.
Lead Principal Software Engineer
Share
"Best text editor that ever existed"
What do you like best about Atom?

It is hackable to its core. You can change the theme, the syntax highlighting, even write custom functionality all with common web languages like html, css and JS.

What do you dislike about Atom?

There isn't much I don't like about this product. Nothing worth mentioning.

What problems is Atom solving and how is that benefiting you?

The ability to utilize and contribute to opensource works is of large benefit to the software community and also reflective on our company.

Mid Market (51-1000 emp.)
Nov 28, 2016
 Source
Overall Rating:
5.0
CM
Curtis M.
Senior Test Automation Engineer
Share
"Amazing tool for coding and developing with any language."
What do you like best about Atom?

This application has amazing built in features, but the best of the features is that ability to add on and customize it to fit your project needs.

What do you dislike about Atom?

One of the features that I dislike about this application is the UI aspect of managing the preferences and settings.

What problems is Atom solving and how is that benefiting you?

I am automating tests for our Web application. The problems I am helping to solve are catching bugs at early phases. A light weight application like Atom allows me to unplug and take my laptop with me anywhere and never feel like I will lose power.

Small Business (50 or fewer emp.)
Nov 16, 2016
 Source
Overall Rating:
5.0
Jansen T. avatar
Jansen T.
Senior Web Developer
Share
"Probably the best free IDE"
What do you like best about Atom?

Cross-platform, free, great plugin ecosystem - this really has it all. Out of the box it works pretty well, but if you spend the time to find a few key extensions that are specific to your workflow it can be amazing. If you like Sublime, Atom is very similar but has a bit of a fresher development team and more active plugin contributors.

What do you dislike about Atom?

Atom has trouble handling large files. I think the team is working on this, but it can be a real pain if you accidentally open a huge library file. You're usually dealing with a crash. Atom also lacks some of the polish that premium products like IntellIJ offers.

What problems is Atom solving and how is that benefiting you?

Many people on our development team use atom on a daily basis. The fact that it is cross-platform, free, and tweakable make it an easy choice for a small team like ours. We code in PHP & Javascript, as well as other frontend languages.

Mid Market (51-1000 emp.)
Oct 31, 2016
 Source
Overall Rating:
5.0
Diogo B. avatar
Diogo B.
Desenvolvedor Web Sênior
Share
"Best developer editor"
What do you like best about Atom?

Atom is the best editor. It is responsive, highly customizable and ready to use. What I like best is the community. There is an extension for everything. Doesn't matter what language or library you use, there is a extension to make your life better with it.

What do you dislike about Atom?

The only thing that I see that can be improved is the stability. Sometimes it bugs the scrollbar or becomes slow.

What problems is Atom solving and how is that benefiting you?

I use Atom for coding. One of the benefits is using an extension to make your work more productive, like linters, shortcut switch between test and code and even run specs directly from editor.

Small Business (50 or fewer emp.)
Oct 31, 2016
 Source
Overall Rating:
5.0
CA
Caio A.
Desenvolvedor Full Stack
Share
"Probably the best text editor ever"
What do you like best about Atom?

Atom It's great not just because of It's hackable and open source structure, but for It's packages too. Inside Atom you can change almost everything, and It's all written on node, witch makes everything easier.

What do you dislike about Atom?

One thing I doesn't like about atom, is that it tends to get slow with time.

What problems is Atom solving and how is that benefiting you?

Atom is helping me being more productive while coding. It's helping me on making websites faster!

Mid Market (51-1000 emp.)
Oct 18, 2016
 Source
Overall Rating:
5.0
SM
Scott M.
Dev Ops Engineer
Share
"The best text editor available"
What do you like best about Atom?

Atom is, IMHO, hands down the best text editor available. It matches the feature set of nearly every other editor on the market, and is extremely extensible with a vibrant development community building cool new things every day. Add to that the fact that Atom is open source and cross-platform across all PC operating systems and you have a recipe for excellence that no one can match.

What do you dislike about Atom?

The git integration in Atom isn't quite as nice as VSCode in my opinion, but that's largely up to the preferences of the user. I also wish you could natively set different tab length for different file types, or auto-detect tab length in an open file. I also wish that there were a way for me to run Atom on an Android device, and especially on ChromeOS.

What problems is Atom solving and how is that benefiting you?

Atom is the editor that I use for all of my development projects and infrastructure automation. I use it for writing code in Go or Python, as well as CloudFormation JSON and YAML files, and Ansible Playbooks. I also have plugins installed that allow me to run tests directly from the editor.

Small Business (50 or fewer emp.)
Aug 23, 2016
 Source
Overall Rating:
5.0
TA
Thiago A.
Owner
Share
"An elegant, batteries-included code editor"
What do you like best about Atom?

Something really great about Atom is the community. There is an excellent open-source community building great plugins for Atom, and it's very easy to find anything you need. The plugins are usually well-built, the code is open, and you can easily contribute. Also, it's completely integrated to git and github, something really helpful. The editor is very elegant and easy to use. It's my editor of choice when working with ruby on rails and full-stack web development.

What do you dislike about Atom?

The bad news is that the editor is a little heavy sometimes, compared to VIM. It was built with html, css and javascript. These tools are very flexible, but are not the most memory efficient or fast. So you're not able to edit huge files like you'd do with VIM or emacs. So if you need to edit huge files, with hundreds of megabytes, you should use something else.

What problems is Atom solving and how is that benefiting you?

I use it for full-stack web development, some ruby, some python, some javascript, html and css. Also, clojure and sometimes java (back-end development). The best thing about it is that it is very user-friendly and well designed. And the git integration is awesome.

Mid Market (51-1000 emp.)
Jul 21, 2016
 Source
Overall Rating:
5.0
👾 Reme L. avatar
👾 Reme L.
Flutter Architect
Share
"LIttle buggy at time but overall AWESOME"
What do you like best about Atom?

It is simple and easy to sue, while also being very extendable, it caters well for all types of developers. At its absolute core it is a beefed up text editor, so as a developer you have a very clean slate to work from to extend to your specific needs, be it theming, code hinting, syntax highlighting. No matter the language you are coding in, it can work with, highlight and suggest accordingly.

What do you dislike about Atom?

The extensible is great, but that does create the odd issue, the editor itself does have the occasional extremely odd crash, but from what I can tell that is almost always caused by a plugin, with so many options it is extremely conceivable to experience the occasional interaction conflicts between some pluggins

What problems is Atom solving and how is that benefiting you?

Well it does not really solve a problem, it was simply the natural evolution from Sublime which just died slowly as the developers stopped working on it.

Small Business (50 or fewer emp.)
Jul 20, 2016
 Source
Overall Rating:
5.0
AM
Alyssa M.
System Engineer
Share
"Clean, customizable text editor"
What do you like best about Atom?

You can customize pretty much everything about this text editor and it integrates seamlessly with Git (big surprise, considering they made it). There are also tons of packages you can install for further customization and for making coding with any language much easier. Overall, just a nice, lightweight text editor with endless features.

What do you dislike about Atom?

It's ready-to-use right after installing it, but depending on your preferences, you might spend a bit of time exploring the settings and changing things up. Otherwise, I have no complaints.

What problems is Atom solving and how is that benefiting you?

One of the biggest benefits is the Git integration. I like having the visual display of which files (and also specific lines!) have been modified right within my text editor. It also provides me with the ability to organize everything very easily, from fixing indentations to changing my file structure.

Mid Market (51-1000 emp.)
Jul 19, 2016
 Source
Overall Rating:
5.0
Pavel D. avatar
Pavel D.
Web Development Team Lead
Share
"Atom is my favorite IDE for Scripting"
What do you like best about Atom?

I use Atom as my IDE for JavaScript, Python and Haskell. It’s an open source project, with a big community behind it. It’s got really impressing variety of plugins, which can be downloaded from Atom itself. Atom is a light program, with a very smooth UI, and it's free. Whatever your scripting language - Atom will provide you the best solution as a text editor.

What do you dislike about Atom?

I would like to debug live running script, currently there is not enough production ready "debugging" packages out there.

What problems is Atom solving and how is that benefiting you?

Software developing

Small Business (50 or fewer emp.)
May 31, 2016
 Source
Overall Rating:
5.0
RW
Robert W.
Founder
Share
"The best editor that you can use"
What do you like best about Atom?

I love the packages. When I need something, I just look it up in the packages and its right there. I do a lot of coding on remote digitalocean servers, so I use the atom remote edit package all the time. Everything is right there.

What do you dislike about Atom?

Nothing. I love ATOM. Don't know how I survived without it. Sublime text is like horse dung compared to atom and it's ease of use and beautiful layout.

What problems is Atom solving and how is that benefiting you?

I am solving problems with digital design in atom. I code ruby on rails and nodejs in atom, and I use it exclusively for code editing.

Mid Market (51-1000 emp.)
May 03, 2016
 Source
Overall Rating:
5.0
BC
Brian C.
Developer Evangelist
Share
"Atom is a modern text editor that stands on the shoulders of its predecessors. "
What do you like best about Atom?

Atom has an easy to use interface, lots of create packages, and since it's built using web technologies, it's a hackable interface even for front end web developers. Built in git is awesome too. Auto updating is a great feature.

What do you dislike about Atom?

Some of the default shortcuts are a little bit weird, but I think that's a matter of coming from Sublime Text. It's also slower than Sublime Text when loading a gigantic code base.

What problems is Atom solving and how is that benefiting you?

I use a text editor every day for my job, so this helps me to do my job. The fact that its built with modern paradigms in mind makes this a clear winner, as it stays up to date with the tools developers use to create things.

Mid Market (51-1000 emp.)
Apr 28, 2016
 Source
Overall Rating:
5.0
Paolo F. avatar
Paolo F.
Data Analytics And Business Intelligence Specialist
Share
"A good text editor"
What do you like best about Atom?

It's opensource, very customizable and has a lot of plugin and extensions.

What do you dislike about Atom?

It's slow and it's not the ideal choice for the management of large text files.

What problems is Atom solving and how is that benefiting you?

I write a lot of code with this editor every day. Very good choice for Javascript developers.

Small Business (50 or fewer emp.)
Apr 27, 2016
 Source
Overall Rating:
5.0
MC
Mc Court C.
Systems Development Manager
Share
"Atom My new best friend."
What do you like best about Atom?

To be honest I didn't think I needed a new text editor in my toolbelt. Then I found atom. Probably my favorite thing is the ease of which I cn tweak the code behind the plugins and extensions using atom itsel. Second to that is the speed and linting capabilities.

What do you dislike about Atom?

It's still maturni g so can be a little buggy at times.

What problems is Atom solving and how is that benefiting you?

I'm using atom all across my workspace now. It's quickly replacing some of the heavier tools like eclipse and netbeams.

Small Business (50 or fewer emp.)
Apr 21, 2016
 Source
Overall Rating:
5.0
MS
Michael S.
Web Application Developer
Share
"Atom is a great editor from the people behind GitHub and continues to improve regularly"
What do you like best about Atom?

I am a long-time Sublime Text user and the jump to Atom was pretty painless. It has a pretty extensive package ecosystem for extending the editor and because it's built on common web technologies it's a breeze to extend yourself.

What do you dislike about Atom?

The only real downside to Atom is that it lags a little when you start it up and could use better support of large files.

What problems is Atom solving and how is that benefiting you?

I am a coder by profession and am always looking for tools that increase my productivity. Atom has proved a comparable editor to Sublime in many ways and has a leg up on them as far as being actively developed and regularly updated. Because the folks from GitHub are behind it, I can also count on it being around in the future.

Small Business (50 or fewer emp.)
Apr 21, 2016
 Source
Overall Rating:
5.0
DV
Dhwanil V.
Web Developer Intern
Share
"Have been using this editor lately for all my products and must say that it is the best"
What do you like best about Atom?

The community support this product has, the plugins it has, the themes all of it is just great.

What do you dislike about Atom?

Sometimes it just freezes, which is very annoying.Though it is a new editor in the market and the community is working hard to make it awesome if this problem is solved that would be great.

What problems is Atom solving and how is that benefiting you?

I use it for all of my projects and has been very useful and has made my development process better and fast.

Small Business (50 or fewer emp.)
Apr 12, 2016
 Source
Overall Rating:
5.0
AF
Adam F.
Production Principal
Share
"Awesome Coding Editor"
What do you like best about Atom?

I love it's openness and extendability, but at the same time it's simplicity to begin with.

What do you dislike about Atom?

Not much, the updating process is sometimes a little bumpy, and it has an annoying habit of timing out on reopening projects, it doesn't crash or not open them, it just gives you a dialog box asking if you want to wait, but the time before it gives you the warning is really short, so you hit "wait" and then it loads.

What problems is Atom solving and how is that benefiting you?

We're a small design firm, focusing on identity and web design. I use it to code almost every language I code, in fact with the exception of iOS development, I use it exclusively. Really, I use it for any text writing I'm doing as well.

Small Business (50 or fewer emp.)
Apr 02, 2016
 Source
Overall Rating:
5.0
RC
Ramón Giovanny C.
Diseño Y Desarrollo Web
Share
"My favorite editor"
What do you like best about Atom?

ease of use, great integration with git , easy customization ,and multi platform

What do you dislike about Atom?

it becomes slow to load, and update plugins, has some bugs to solve for example the minimap

What problems is Atom solving and how is that benefiting you?

we have unified our editor also centralized our work methodology , having easy integration with version control systems , makes it very versatile when it comes to developing software

Small Business (50 or fewer emp.)
Mar 31, 2016
 Source
Overall Rating:
5.0
MM
Michael M.
Web Developer
Share
"My go-to IDE"
What do you like best about Atom?

Atom is by far the best IDE I have ever used. Feature rich with a ton of addons based on your languages, great design with the flexibility to customize, performance is top notch, and so much more.

What do you dislike about Atom?

At one point, one of the addons completely broke the application and I had to reinstall. This may have been due to something I did, but after reinstalling I left off that certain addon and it never happened again.

What problems is Atom solving and how is that benefiting you?

A great IDE for software development. Amazing product.

Small Business (50 or fewer emp.)
Mar 20, 2016
 Source
Overall Rating:
5.0
EB
Emile B.
Analyste Programmeur
Share
"The hackable text editor I didn't know I needed"
What do you like best about Atom?

Nice UI themes, ease of use, lots of plugins. The fact that I can customize it with everyday tools like JS/CoffeeScript, CSS/Less and CSON. It's also open-source, so I can easily hack into it. Another impressive feature of Atom is that it's like an HTML page, and it provides the Chrome Dev tools to debug the software like you would on a normal webpage.

What do you dislike about Atom?

Sometimes a little slow. Some plugin maintainers don't update their plugin and some great plugins are left unstable.

What problems is Atom solving and how is that benefiting you?

As a primary text editor to code web applications.