I spent 48 hours with Nova, a new native IDE for MacOS released by Panic on September 14th.
Two days ago I downloaded the free trial of Nova, installed the TypeScript extension, snagged a theme, opened a TypeScript project and started coding.
Nova is fast. Files open with haste. Find in Project... delivers search results fast. There's no visible slowdown editing large files. When I open multiple text editor panes and terminals Nova doesn't skip a beat. The native IDE just works. Not everything is straight out of MacOS. According to Panic, their engineers coded the text editor from scratch after discovering some bugs in Apple’s text layout engine and ended up with a more performant experience.
Nova's text editor is delightful. There’s multiline editing, intuitive autocompletion, code hints. The TypeScript extension features some refactoring functionality for all those code smells. Panic found some novel uses for the MacBook Pro Touch Bar including running your npm script at the press of a button, as if typing npm run start took too long.
The design is clean and intuitive, very familiar to anyone using MacOS. Finding stuff is easy. When I click on the whimsical iconography there’s subtle user feedback. I open a dialog and find myself staring into the depths of outer space. Nova is honestly a little weird. Panic is the same company that released a handheld game device with a hand crank... because they could. It's part of the charm.
Nova has all the things you've come to expect from a modern IDE for JavaScript development. There’s extensions for TypeScript, Prettier and ESLint, Git integration, integrated terminal and development server. You can connect to a variety of servers including Amazon S3, Azure, and Rackspace, or via protocols like SSH, FTP, WebDAV HTTPS. I appreciate this feature for small projects. Panic syncs your server configurations across workstations. The nova command line tool opens files and workspaces from the MacOS Terminal.
VS Code definitely has some advantages over Nova including better Git integration, a robust debugging experience, large extension ecosystem. Despite all those wonderful features, VS Code pauses briefly before opening some files. VS Code doesn't tokenize large files because it bogs down the application. VS Code feels out of place on MacOS. Nova UI is snappy in comparison. Nova is a very capable JavaScript IDE. The performance of a native app alone is worth it, but the MacOS feel prompted me to switch.
At $99 ($49 yearly subscription after the first year), Nova is reasonably priced. If you have a serial number from Panic’s legacy IDE Coda, the initial price drops to $79. Nova is a ground up rewrite of Coda.
If you’re looking for an alternative to VS Code, download the free trial of Nova. You may be surprised how a native IDE can really improve developer experience.
Disclaimer: I’m not paid by or affiliated with Panic.
Latest comments (42)
Don't know how exactly you use code editor, but I've spent 2 minutes with my current project in Nova to understand, that Nova is colourful garbage. No method click definitions, no fast access to my files - why do you need Notepad for $99?
Thanks for the review. I've been using BBEdit since version 1.0 (yes, I'm that damned old). Going to go download this immediately. As to the price; as a long-time commercial software developer, I believe in paying top dollar for top shelf tools to help me do my job. This probably isn't for (or meant for) the occasional note taker or shell script author.
ps; Holy hell. I just realized that I responded to a very old post. I don't know how I'd never heard of this app before now!
I love Nova. It’s pleasant to the eyes, efficient and makes me love writing code. FTP access is a breeze and everything works “as intended”. VS Code is like a piece of wood where Nova is like a polished gemstone.
This is a funny article. I used to use Coda and later on Nova since many years. I love the MacOS System with all the nice and polished apps. But especially Nova made me now move to VSCode instead. The main problem is what you had as positive point. The editor of nova is not fast and worth 99 bucks but it is slow and sometimes unstable. Just open big JS scripts and see how slow it is scrolling. This is just a nightmare. Just to make it clear - I have an M1 Macbook Pro.
I of course are missing some of the integrated SFTP and Terminal features that Nova has. But every day I work with VSCode I find ways and extensions to make it more "my editor". I am happy without Nova.
I spent 10 years coding in Coda and forgot about Nova being a subscription based 😬
what theme is that?
I'm not sure. I have long moved on from that theme.
@steveblue all this time later, what's your verdict? I bought Nova when it first came out, then regretted the $100 because it didn't quite support what I was doing at the time, and extensions in VS Code made it easy. It's looking much more mature now, but my license only goes back to version 7 which means I'd have to pay $50 to test the waters. VS Code's energy usage (and a few other nit-picky things) have me wanting a native editor. Well, I always want native apps but that's another conversation...
I still use Nova! Nova is a great replacement. The only feature I truly miss from VS Code is the git diff that helps fix merge conflicts, but I think a similar tool is on the roadmap for Nova.
I've been using Nova since the betas, and as a long time Coda user who dropped it about 7 years ago for VS Code, I was very pleased with what Panic brought to the table. Is it perfect? Of course not. But it checks all the boxes I need for my daily driver IDE and it has a smaller memory footprint than VS Code. That's important to me as I'm now using a 2020 Macbook Air with only 16GB of RAM as my main development machine. VS Code runs fine on this machine, but I find it's a bit of a memory hog (no doubt due to being built on Electron). Nova feels light and fast.
I can't agree more to this article. I've went through two Nova trials and loved everything about the IDE. I'd be happy to pay for it, but the only thing that is keeping me from doing it is the TypeScript support — it's just not up to VSCode. Auto completion and auto imports for instance just doesn't work as well yet. I know it's up to the extension to improve this, and I'm sure it's not something easy to do, but even though Nova felt smoother performance-wise, it felt clunky to perform my React TypeScript workflow in it.
I think the price is okay. I'm a part-time dabbler, so probably won't be upgrading from my old Coda 2 license. If the upgrade was, say $40, it would seem like a more attractive option, but $20 off seems a bit pointless.