BBEdit, the legendary text and code editor from Bare Bones, has been updated today for macOS with a huge list of new features, including text search within images, enhanced Shortcuts automation, AI worksheet transfer, and new customization options. Here are the details.
BBEdit 16 is, unsurprisingly, huge
As long-time BBEdit users know, Bare Bones doesn’t update its app’s version number willy-nilly. When BBEdit 15 has arrived In January 2024, it brought a long list of major additions, including built-in ChatGPT worksheets, a Minimap palette to get a zoomed-out overview of the entire document, expandable Cheat Sheets, Text Merge, and a redesigned project system.
today, BBEdit 16 released with a longer list of new features and improvements, the most important of which is text-in-image search with support. grep patterns.
This means that users can not only search for text within screenshots, photos and other image files directly from BBEdit’s existing multi-file search interface, but can also use more advanced pattern matching to find variations of a term, specific text structures or repeated formatting patterns that a simple keyword search might miss.
As Rich Siegel, founder and CEO of Bare Bones, told 9to5Mac, “It’s in the spirit of BBEdit to find text wherever it is. And (images) are just a new place to look.”
BBEdit 16 also improves Notebooks, offering filtering with built-in indexing for faster searching, a welcome addition for heavy users who rely on BBEdit for large volumes of text and projects. Additionally, Notebooks and projects can use different color schemes, which will help users distinguish between workspaces at a glance.
And speaking of faster search, BBEdit 16 includes a ton of low-end performance and code improvements that make it run more lightly, which in turn requires less processing power and ultimately energy.
As Siegel told 9to5Mac:
“Is it going to save the world? No, it’s not. It’s a small thing. But I kind of want to set an example here and bring everyone together with the idea of doing less.”
A focus on efficiency also translates into real performance gains. For example, SFTP file transfers are now a notch or two faster than before. The handling of emojis also received some attention BBEdit 16internal changes that make the editor work more smoothly with complex emojis containing multiple Unicode components, as well as updates to the Character Inspector so that it can display the Unicode names of characters in the selection.
BBEdit 16 also extends Shortcut support from version 15 with deeper integration with the system’s Application Intents. Users can now access BBEdit’s text transformations directly from Shortcuts, including sorting text, handling duplicate lines, finding or removing lines that match a pattern, and Replace All with grep support.
Some of these actions don’t even require BBEdit to be visible. Beyond that, Siegel tells 9to5Mac, it’s an ongoing effort that will expand as users begin to build workflows around it.
For BBEdit users who rely on LLM integration within Worksheets, today’s update also brings a more modern chat experience. BBEdit 16 adds support for streaming APIs, so responses begin to appear as data returns from the server, rather than being inserted only after the full response is complete.
The update also improves model selection. While previous versions allowed users to select from a predefined list or manually type in the model name, BBEdit 16 can now request a current list of available models from supported providers via their API, allowing users to select directly from that list instead of manually tracking model names.
Finally, BBEdit 16 also brings updates to several long-standing parts of the program. Its built-in HTML syntax checker, for example, now uses the W3C API for checking. There is also an option to run the validator locally for users who don’t want to send HTML to an external service.
Site tools have been updated to support separate test and production deployments, so users don’t have to shuffle server settings back and forth when moving between staging and public sites. For users coming from VI, BBEdit 16 Adds VI keyboard emulation.
BBEdit 16 is available todaypricing unchanged from previous releases: $60 for new users, $30 for upgrades from BBEdit 15, and $40 for upgrades from older versions. BBEdit 16 is also a free upgrade for BBEdit 15 customers who purchased a license on or after November 1, 2025.
As always, the Free Mode of the app remains available, and the new release resets the 30-day fully functional trial period.
To check out the full release notes for BBEdit 16, follow this link.
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