micro

micro is a terminal-based text editor that aims to be easy to use and intuitive, while also taking advantage of the capabilities of modern terminals. It comes as a single, batteries-included, static binary with no dependencies; you can download and use it right now! As its name indicates, micro aims to be somewhat of a successor to the nano editor by being easy to install and use. It strives to be enjoyable as a full-time editor for people who prefer to work in a terminal, or those who regularly edit files over SSH. Here is a picture of micro editing its source code. To see more screenshots of micro, showcasing some of the default color schemes, see here. You can also check out the website for Micro at https://micro-editor.github.io. Features Easy to use and install. No dependencies or external files are needed — just the binary you can download further down the page. Multiple cursors. Common keybindings (Ctrl-s, Ctrl-c, Ctrl-v, Ctrl-z, …). Keybindings can be rebound to your liking. Sane defaults. You shouldn't have to configure much out of the box (and it is extremely easy to configure). Splits and tabs. nano-like menu to help you remember the keybindings. Extremely good mouse support. This means mouse dragging to create a selection, double click to select by word, and triple click to select by line. Cross-platform (it should work on all the platforms Go runs on). Note that while Windows is supported, Mingw/Cygwin is not (see below). Plugin system (plugins are written in Lua). micro has a built-in plugin manager to automatically install, remove, and update plugins. Built-in diff gutter. Simple autocompletion. Persistent undo. Automatic linting and error notifications. Syntax highlighting for over 130 languages. Color scheme support. By default, micro comes with 16, 256, and true color themes. True color support. Copy and paste with the system clipboard. Small and simple. Easily configurable. Macros. Smart highlighting of trailing whitespace and tab vs space errors. Common editor features such as undo/redo, line numbers, Unicode support, soft wrapping, … Installation To install micro, you can download a prebuilt binary, or you can build it from source. If you want more information about ways to install micro, see this wiki page. Use micro -version to get the version information after installing. It is only guaranteed that you are installing the most recent stable version if you install from the prebuilt binaries, Homebrew, or Snap. A desktop entry file and man page can be found in the assets/packaging directory. Pre-built binaries Pre-built binaries are distributed in releases. To uninstall micro, simply remove the binary, and the configuration directory at ~/.config/micro. Third-party quick-install script curl https://getmic.ro | bash The script will place the micro binary in the current directory. From there, you can move it to a directory on your path of your choosing (e.g. sudo mv micro /usr/bin). See its GitHub repository for more information. Eget With Eget installed, you can easily get a pre-built binary: eget micro-editor/micro Use --tag VERSION to download a specific tagged version. eget --tag nightly micro-editor/micro # download the nightly version (compiled every day at midnight UTC) eget --tag v2.0.8 micro-editor/micro # download version 2.0.8 rather than the latest release You can install micro by adding --to /usr/local/bin to the eget command, or move the binary manually to a directory on your $PATH after the download completes. See Eget for more information. Package managers You can install micro using Homebrew on Mac: brew install micro Note for Mac: All micro keybindings use the control or alt (option) key, not the command key. By default, macOS terminals do not forward alt key events. To fix this, please see the section on macOS terminals further below. On Linux, you can install micro through snap snap install micro --classic Micro is also available through other package managers on Linux such as dnf, AUR, Nix, and package managers for other operating systems. These packages are not guaranteed to be up-to-date. Linux: distro-specific package managers: dnf install micro (Fedora). apt install micro (Ubuntu and Debian). pacman -S micro (Arch Linux). emerge app-editors/micro (Gentoo). zypper install micro-editor (SUSE) eopkg install micro (Solus). pacstall -I micro (Pacstall). apt-get install micro (ALT Linux) See wiki for details about CRUX, Termux. distro-agnostic package managers: nix profile install nixpkgs#micro (with Nix and flakes enabled) flox install micro (with Flox) Windows: Chocolatey, Scoop and WinGet. choco install micro. scoop install micro. winget install zyedidia.micro OpenBSD: Available in the ports tree and also available as a binary package. pkg_add -v micro. NetBSD, macOS, Linux, Illumos, etc. with pkgsrc-current: pkg_add micro macOS: Available in package managers. sudo port install micro (with MacPorts) brew install micro (with Homebrew) nix profile install nixpkgs#micro (with Nix and flakes enabled) flox install micro (with Flox) Note for Linux desktop environments: For interfacing with the local system clipboard, the following tools need to be installed: For X11, xclip or xsel For Wayland, wl-clipboard Without these tools installed, micro will use an internal clipboard for copy and paste, but it won't be accessible to external applications. Building from source If your operating system does not have a binary release, but does run Go, you can build from source. Make sure that you have Go version 1.19 or greater and Go modules are enabled. git clone https://github.com/micro-editor/micro cd micro make build sudo mv micro /usr/local/bin # optional The binary will be placed in the current directory and can be moved to anywhere you like (for example /usr/local/bin). The command make install will install the binary to $GOPATH/bin or $GOBIN. You can install directly with go get (go get github.com/micro-editor