What Is Kate and What Is It Used For?

Kate is a modern, feature-packed text editor built on the KDE Frameworks and Qt. It runs on Linux, Windows, and macOS, and it is designed both for general text file viewing and editing and for programming work. If you need one editor that can open many files at once, handle code in hundreds of languages, and extend itself with plugins, Kate is built for that job.

What Kate Is

Kate is a text editor, not a full IDE. Its core purpose is viewing and editing text files, but it is optimized for editing code. It is developed within the KDE ecosystem and is available across the three major desktop platforms.

What Kate Is Used For

Everyday text editing

Kate lets you edit and view many files at the same time, using both tabs and split views. That makes it practical for working across several documents without opening multiple windows.

Programming and code editing

Kate is positioned as a tool for programming. Its code-focused capabilities include:

• Syntax highlighting for over 400 languages, so code in almost any programming language is easier to read.
• Bracket awareness, which helps you navigate complex code block hierarchies.
• Autocompletion for many languages via the Language Server Protocol (LSP).
• Scriptable auto indentation, VI input mode, rectangular block selection mode, and smart comment/uncomment handling.
• Multi-cursor and multi-selection editing to speed up repetitive changes.

Working on complex projects

For larger work, Kate provides a project sidebar to navigate directory structures, smart tabs for quick access to recently opened documents, and a powerful search and replace tool that can search inside an entire project. Split views let you work on multiple files simultaneously.

Writing and previewing markup

A preview plugin can show you how your Markdown, HTML, and even SVG will look. On-the-fly spellchecking helps you check text before publishing.

Extending the editor with plugins

Kate ships with many plugins installed by default. These include an embedded terminal emulator for launching console commands directly from Kate, an SQL extension for executing queries, GDB integration for debugging, and one-click project builds.

Platform Availability

Who It Suits

Kate fits you if you want a single editor for both plain text and code, you work across multiple files or a whole project, and you value configurability — every hotkey can be remapped, which helps if you are switching from another editor and want to keep your existing bindings. If you mainly need a lightweight scratchpad for a single file, Kate's broader feature set may be more than you need.