Fresh has everything I need in a text editor.
Screenshot by Jack Wallen/ZDNET
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ZDNET’s key takeaways
- Fresh is a new take on the simple text editor.
- Fresh is what nano would be with mouse support.
- Fresh is free to use on Linux and MacOS.
I’ve been a regular user of the nano text editor since its release.
Yeah, I’m not a fan of vi or emacs. (Sacrilege, I know.)
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I’ve always found the nano text editor to be incredibly simple to use; it doesn’t get in my way, and it allows me to create or edit text files with very little complication. And because I’m not a serious developer, I don’t need the extra bells and whistles found in vi and emacs.
Even so, there are things about nano that could be improved.
Oh, right — they have been improved, thanks to a new tool called Fresh.
A text-based editor with GUI-like options
The tagline for Fresh is, “A terminal text editor you can just use,” and that’s spot on. Where nano depends solely on the keyboard, Fresh opts to add in mouse support and more common keyboard shortcuts (such as Ctrl+C for copy and Ctrl+V for paste) for everyday tasks like cut and paste.
Fresh is the best of both worlds: a text-based editor with GUI-like options. I’m all for it.
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Fresh has a menu system that you can access with your mouse, and it also features a built-in file manager.
One of my favorite features in Fresh is the ability to click anywhere in a file (which can be up to 10GB in size), and the cursor is automatically there. In nano, I have to use the keyboard arrow keys or page up/down keys to navigate to where I want the cursor to be placed. In a large file, that can be time-consuming.
Fresh also offers a short list of themes to choose from (dark, light, high-contrast, and nostalgia), and you can even set a custom background image. The only caveat to setting the background is that it is done in the scripts/landscape-wide.txt file, which isn’t created by default.
And that’s kind of the point of Fresh — to make using a text editor on Linux simpler and more efficient.
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I never thought I’d find a text editor to replace nano, but it’s hard to deny Fresh.
And if you’re thinking this is nothing more than a terminal app for dummies, think again. Fresh also includes support for things like:
- The ability to manipulate buffers, splits, and text
- Process spawning and filesystem access
- Virtual buffers and overlays
- Custom keybinding modes
- Go to definition/references
- Inline diagnostics and quick fixes
- Horizontal and vertical splitting
- Project switching
Installing Fresh
Installing Fresh is quite easy and free — you just have to know where to find the right files. You’ll find the installers on the Fresh download page, but you have to expand the listing to view the .deb files.
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For example, if you download the .deb file, you can install Fresh with:
sudo dpkg -i fresh-editor*.deb
If you download the .rpm, the command would be:
sudo rpm -i fresh-editor*.rpm
You can also install with Flatpak or use the AppImage.
To install via Flatpak, download the .flatpak file and issue the command:
flatpak install fresh-editor*.flatpak
Alternatively, you can download and run the installer script, which will install Fresh on your current distribution.
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sinelaw/fresh/refs/heads/master/scripts/install.sh | sh
Nano for MacOS, too
For MacOS, you need to have Homebrew installed, after which you can install Fresh with:
brew tap sinelaw/fresh && brew install fresh-editor
Trust me when I tell you that Fresh is an outstanding terminal-based text editor. This is exactly the nano replacement I’ve been looking for, and I’m confident that any nano user will feel the same way.
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If you like the idea of a terminal-based text editor with a bit more oomph, give Fresh a try and see if it doesn’t become your new go-to.