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Kate

Get an Edge in Editing

Available for Linux, Windows and macOS

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Plasma

Features

Kate is a Feature-Packed Text Editor

Kate is packed with features that will make it easier for you to view and edit all your text files. Kate lets you to edit and view many files at the same time, both in tabs and split views, and comes with a wide variety of plugins, including an embedded terminal that lets you launch console commands directly from Kate, powerful search and replace plugins, and a preview plugin that can show you what your MD, HTML and even SVG will look like.

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Make Your Code Pretty With Syntax Highlighting

Kate supports highlighting for over 300 languages making it easier to read code in almost all programming languages. Kate also understands how brackets works and will help you navigate inside complex code blocks hierarchies. On-the-fly spellchecking is also included and will help you check your text before publishing. Screenshot of Kate with syntax highlighting

Screenshot of Kate syntax chooser

Multi-cursor editing

Boost your productivity with a help of multi-cursor and multi-selection features. Kate now has it! Switching from other proprietary text editors and missing your hotkey bindings you used to? You can configure every hotkey in Kate so you don't even have to retrain yourself

Animation of Kate multi-cursor features

Work on Complex Projects Efficiently

Work on multiple files at the same time with split views. Use the project sidebar to navigate your project directory structures and use Kate's smart tabs to quickly access your recently opened documents. The powerful search and replace tool lets you quickly search inside your entire projects.

Screenshot of Kate search and replace tool
Screenshot of Kate project sidebar

Develop your Next Application with Kate

Kate is the perfect tool for programming as it includes autocompletion for many languages with the help of the Language Server Protocol (LSP). The editor has been optimized for editing code and provide scriptable auto indentation, VI input mode, rectangular block selection mode, smart comment and uncomment handling and much more.

Screenshot of Kate search and replace tool

Plugins

Kate contains many plugins installed by defaults, making it more powerful than any other text editor. Use the integrated terminal emulator to run commands directly from Kate, execute SQL queries with the SQL extension, use GDB to debug your program, build projects with just one click, and much, much more.

Konsole inside Kate

News

Tuesday, 12 December 2023

Kate KF6 Status

Current state of the port Thanks to the help of our contributors the current state of Kate for the upcoming first Qt & KF 6 release looks very promising. This includes not just people working on Kate and KTextEditor/KSyntaxHighlighing, but all of KDE Frameworks and Qt. I now use the KF 6 based version both at work and home exclusively after we switched the master branch over to that. So far, beside the natural issues that can occur using a branch under active development, nothing really did stick out as a blocking issue. Read More
Sunday, 30 April 2023

KDE e.V. Microsoft Store Statistics

Let's take a look at the current state of the KDE e.V. published applications in the Microsoft Store. Last 30 days statistics Here are the number of acquisitions for the last 30 days (roughly equal to the number of installations, not mere downloads) for our applications: KDE Connect - Enabling communication between all your devices - 11,640 acquisitions Okular - More than a reader - 9,100 acquisitions Kate - Advanced Text Editor - 3,000 acquisitions Read More
Wednesday, 15 February 2023

Introducing The Embedded Terminal on Windows

Kate has been supported on Windows for a long time however, we missed one crucial feature on Windows that made it not as good as Kate on Linux. That feature was the built-in terminal. If you are a developer you might have to use the terminal a lot and having a built-in terminal inside your editor can be really helpful and convenient. With 23.04, we have filled this gap. After a hectic weekend of 20+ hours of hacking on a borrowed windows machine and sacrificing a lot of other things, Kate now has a built-in terminal on Windows as well. Read More
Wednesday, 1 February 2023

Using Kate's Git Features

Git support in Kate landed almost 2 years ago but so far it is undocumented. I am writing this article in order to fill this gap and hopefully make more people aware of the git related features that Kate has. To be able to use git functionality you need to enable at least two plugins Project plugin (commit / status / branch compare / stashing / file history) Documents Plugin (file history) Git blame (git blame support) Once the project plugin is enabled and you are in a git repository, you will have the git toolview in your left sidebar: Read More
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