Over a decade ago, Bare Bones Software replaced the free BBEdit Lite with TextWrangler, which at the time cost $50 (see “Bare Bones Rustles Up TextWrangler 1.0,” 3 March 2003). With version 2.0, Bare Bones made TextWrangler free to raise the bar for competing text editors (see “Macworld Expo San Francisco 2005 Superlatives,” 17 January 2005), and since then TextWrangler has served as an ambassador for BBEdit. That started to change with BBEdit 11.6, which introduced a free indefinite “demo” mode (see “BBEdit 11.6,” 11 July 2016).

• BBEdit™ 10.5.5 Product Design Jim Correia, Rich Siegel, Steve Kalkwarf, Patrick Woolsey Product Engineering Jim Correia, Seth Dillingham, Jon Hueras, Steve Kalkwarf, Rich Siegel, Steve Sisak.
• BBEdit 11 is here! What's new in BBEdit 11? Here's a summary of the high points, but we encourage you to read the complete change notes. Improved syntax coloring - The internal syntax coloring mechanics have been extensively reworked, allowing for a much greater selection of core color types, and now allowing language modules to add their own color types.

Bbedit Free Modeling

Now Bare Bones Software is officially sunsetting TextWrangler. When the next version of macOS ships, Bare Bones Software will keep updating BBEdit but will no longer update TextWrangler.

If you use TextWrangler, this means you should switch to the latest version of BBEdit soon. You can use all of BBEdit’s features for a 30-day evaluation period, after which you can continue to use it indefinitely, albeit with a reduced feature set and markers on the disabled commands. Even in this mode, BBEdit 11.6 has many more features than the current version of TextWrangler. Along with ponies, other options include synced settings via Dropbox or iCloud Drive, live previewing of HTML and Markdown documents, and access to BBEdit’s power from within Automator workflows.

Bbedit Free Models

In free mode, BBEdit provides a modified set of features which incorporates a powerful set of core features. Using BBEdit in free mode costs you nothing while providing an upgrade path to advanced features and capabilities. To enable advanced features after the evaluation period is over, you will need to have an active subscription.

Educational institutions that want to distribute BBEdit without buying a full license, such as on loaner machines or classroom Macs, can request a special license code from sales@barebones.com. Copies of BBEdit licensed in this way won’t display the paid-license menu commands at all, and there will be no evaluation mode prompts. In other words, it’s just like using TextWrangler in the past, but with extra features. For educational discounts on one or more copies of the full version of BBEdit, contact Bare Bones, and of course, any organizationinterested in site licensing should contact Bare Bones for discount pricing.

Overall, this move is a win for everyone. TextWrangler users get more features for free and can see more easily if upgrading to BBEdit would be helpful, the upgrade path becomes significantly more obvious, and Bare Bones doesn’t have to spend additional time on a separate product.