What Features Does Kate Offer for Coding and Text Editing?

Updated

Kate is a free, open-source text editor built on KDE Frameworks and Qt, available for Linux, Windows, and macOS. It is aimed at people who edit code and text files regularly and want an editor that handles many files at once, supports a wide range of languages, and can be extended with plugins. If you write code in more than one language, work inside larger project directories, or want an editor you can configure down to individual hotkeys, Kate's feature set is designed for exactly that.

Editing and navigation features

  • Syntax highlighting for over 400 languages, which makes code easier to read across almost all programming languages.
  • Bracket awareness: Kate understands how brackets work and helps you navigate complex code block hierarchies.
  • On-the-fly spellchecking, useful for checking prose before publishing.
  • Multi-cursor and multi-selection editing to apply the same change in several places at once.
  • Configurable hotkeys: every hotkey can be remapped, so you can keep the bindings you used in other editors without retraining yourself.

Working with multiple files and projects

Kate lets you edit and view many files at the same time, both in tabs and split views. For larger work:

  • The project sidebar lets you navigate your project directory structure.
  • Smart tabs give quick access to recently opened documents.
  • The search and replace tool can search inside your entire project, not just the open file.

Coding-specific capabilities

Kate is positioned as a programming tool, and the coding features reflect that:

  • Autocompletion for many languages via the Language Server Protocol (LSP).
  • Scriptable auto indentation.
  • VI input mode for people who prefer modal editing.
  • Rectangular block selection mode.
  • Smart comment and uncomment handling.

Plugins included by default

Kate ships with many plugins installed by default, which is where much of its extra power comes from:

Plugin What it does
Integrated terminal emulator Run console commands directly from Kate
SQL extension Execute SQL queries
GDB integration Debug your program
Build tooling Build projects with one click
Preview plugin Show what your Markdown, HTML, and SVG will look like
Search and replace plugins Powerful search and replace

Who this fits

Kate is a reasonable choice if you want a single editor that covers multi-language coding, project-wide search, split-view multitasking, and plugin-based extras like an embedded terminal and live previews — and you value being able to remap every hotkey. It runs on Linux, Windows, and macOS, so the same editor can follow you across platforms. If your needs are limited to editing a single plain text file occasionally, many of these features will go unused, but they do not get in the way of basic editing.