Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

Atom

16.8K
14.5K
+ 1
2.5K
Brackets

450
752
+ 1
202
Add tool

Atom vs Brackets: What are the differences?

Introduction

Here, we will compare Atom and Brackets, two popular text editors, and highlight their key differences.

  1. 1. Built-in Terminal and Git Integration: Atom provides a built-in terminal, allowing users to access the command line interface without leaving the editor. Additionally, it offers seamless integration with Git, enabling developers to efficiently manage version control within the editor itself.

  2. 2. Popularity and Community Support: Atom boasts a larger and more active user community, resulting in a wider range of available themes, packages, and plugins. Brackets, on the other hand, has a smaller community but offers a more streamlined experience by focusing on essential features.

  3. 3. Live Preview: Brackets comes with a feature called "Live Preview," which allows developers to see the changes to their code in real-time as they work on it; this is particularly useful for web development. Although Atom also provides live preview capabilities through packages, it requires additional setup and configuration.

  4. 4. Language Support: While both Atom and Brackets support a wide range of programming languages, Atom has a broader ecosystem of community-developed extensions, making it more versatile for different coding needs and offering better syntax highlighting and autocompletion for various programming languages.

  5. 5. Performance and Load Time: Brackets has been optimized for faster load times and overall performance, making it ideal for quick coding tasks and small projects. Atom, on the other hand, can be slower and more resource-intensive, making it better suited for larger projects with extensive customization needs.

  6. 6. Advanced Customization Options: Atom offers extensive customization options, allowing users to personalize the editor's appearance, key bindings, and functionality to suit their preferences. Brackets, while still customizable, has a more focused and streamlined approach, providing a simpler and more user-friendly interface out-of-the-box.

In Summary, Atom offers a broader range of community support, versatile language support, and advanced customization options but can be slower and resource-intensive, while Brackets excels in performance, streamlined experience, and real-time code preview capabilities.

Decisions about Atom and Brackets
Samriddhi Sinha
Machine Learning Engineer at Chefling · | 6 upvotes · 1M views

Lightweight and versatile. Huge library of extensions that enable you to integrate a host of services to your development environment. VS Code's biggest strength is its library of extensions which enables it to directly compete with every single major IDE for almost all major programming languages.

See more
Andrey Ginger
Managing Partner at WhiteLabelDevelopers · | 3 upvotes · 517.3K views

Since communication with Github is not necessary, the Atom is less convenient in working with text and code. Sublim's support and understanding of projects is best for us. Notepad for us is a completely outdated solution with an unacceptable interface. We use a good theme for Sublim ayu-dark

See more
Felix Hungenberg
Graphic Designer & Web Developer at hosting.de GmbH · | 2 upvotes · 121.3K views

I use Visual Studio Code every day, it was very refreshing coming from Atom to get a lightweight, all i need setup right out of the box.

After working with Atom for around 2 years I switch to VSCode.

Here is why:

  1. Color display of variables in code. This may now sound much, but it improve the display of scss variables and its a core feature.
  2. Out of the box features.
  3. Automation! VSCode suggests usefull things to you.
  4. Integraded console. I love the console in VSCode. It is faster than my 'default' cmd on Windows. For Atom you would have to install a package, that doesn't work so well on Windows.
  5. Output logging per Plugin.
  6. Setup time. In VSCode I can set up my workspace in under 5 minutes. For Atom I need
  7. Plugins work perfect out of the box. This is a mayor one for me. For example: In order to set up Editorconfig you have to adjust mutliple values and plugins to get it work. Plugin creators of Editorconfig for Atom are not to blame: They include a linter, that verifies whether the settings are correct or not.
  8. Git implementation. VSCode ships with Git and even if the git packet of vscode doesn't look like much, theres a lot to it. For example you can watch changes inline.
  9. Minimap and vertical scrollbar. This feature is much better implementet in VSCode and you don't need an extra plugin.
  10. Auto completion. Sass mixins example: @include and you press CTRL+SPACE and VSCode shows you every Sass mixin.
  11. Copy paths from open file tab. In VSCode you can copy the path of an file directly when you have it open. In atom you need to select 'show in tree view' and than copy the path or relative path.
  12. Tree view. The tree view VSCode automaticly brings you to the current open file by default. This helps when working with components.
  13. File search. The file search supports the asterisk so you can search for eg molecule-*.ts.
  14. Tasks support. Tasks are integrated in VSCode so eg. for Typescript you can CTRL + SHIFT + B and select tsc: watch - tsconfig.ts.
  15. Short waiting time. For example when deleting files or beautifying 20.000 lines of json (Atom hangs up).
  16. More releases. Faster feature implementation. Active community.
See more
Manage your open source components, licenses, and vulnerabilities
Learn More
Pros of Atom
Pros of Brackets
  • 529
    Free
  • 449
    Open source
  • 343
    Modular design
  • 321
    Hackable
  • 316
    Beautiful UI
  • 147
    Backed by github
  • 119
    Built with node.js
  • 113
    Web native
  • 107
    Community
  • 35
    Packages
  • 18
    Cross platform
  • 5
    Nice UI
  • 5
    Multicursor support
  • 5
    TypeScript editor
  • 3
    Open source, lots of packages, and so configurable
  • 3
    cli start
  • 3
    Simple but powerful
  • 3
    Chrome Inspector works IN EDITOR
  • 3
    Snippets
  • 2
    Code readability
  • 2
    It's powerful
  • 2
    Awesome
  • 2
    Smart TypeScript code completion
  • 2
    Well documented
  • 1
    works with GitLab
  • 1
    "Free", "Hackable", "Open Source", The Awesomness
  • 1
    full support
  • 1
    vim support
  • 1
    Split-Tab Layout
  • 1
    Apm publish minor
  • 1
    Consistent UI on all platforms
  • 1
    User friendly
  • 1
    Hackable and Open Source
  • 0
    Publish
  • 51
    Beautiful UI
  • 40
    Lightweight
  • 25
    Extremely customizable
  • 20
    Free plugins
  • 14
    Live Preview
  • 13
    Free themes
  • 8
    Clean
  • 7
    Easy
  • 6
    Integration with photoshop
  • 4
    Perfect for web development
  • 4
    Simple
  • 4
    Fast
  • 2
    Awesome UI
  • 2
    Clean UI
  • 2
    Code suggestions

Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions

Cons of Atom
Cons of Brackets
  • 19
    Slow with large files
  • 7
    Slow startup
  • 2
    Most of the time packages are hard to find.
  • 1
    No longer maintained
  • 1
    Cannot Run code with F5
  • 1
    Can be easily Modified
  • 3
    Not good for backend developer
  • 1
    You have to edit json file to set your settings.
  • 1
    Bad node.js support

Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

What is Atom?

At GitHub, we're building the text editor we've always wanted. A tool you can customize to do anything, but also use productively on the first day without ever touching a config file. Atom is modern, approachable, and hackable to the core. We can't wait to see what you build with it.

What is Brackets?

With focused visual tools and preprocessor support, it is a modern text editor that makes it easy to design in the browser.

Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

What companies use Atom?
What companies use Brackets?
Manage your open source components, licenses, and vulnerabilities
Learn More

Sign up to get full access to all the companiesMake informed product decisions

What tools integrate with Atom?
What tools integrate with Brackets?

Sign up to get full access to all the tool integrationsMake informed product decisions

What are some alternatives to Atom and Brackets?
Sublime Text
Sublime Text is available for OS X, Windows and Linux. One license is all you need to use Sublime Text on every computer you own, no matter what operating system it uses. Sublime Text uses a custom UI toolkit, optimized for speed and beauty, while taking advantage of native functionality on each platform.
Visual Studio Code
Build and debug modern web and cloud applications. Code is free and available on your favorite platform - Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows.
cell
cell is a self-constructing web app framework powered by a self-driving DOM. Learning cell is mostly about understanding how cell works, and not about how to use and memorize some API methods, because there is no API.
Element
Element is a Vue 2.0 based component library for developers, designers and product managers, with a set of design resources.
PyCharm
PyCharm’s smart code editor provides first-class support for Python, JavaScript, CoffeeScript, TypeScript, CSS, popular template languages and more. Take advantage of language-aware code completion, error detection, and on-the-fly code fixes!
See all alternatives