Micro is a terminal-based text editor that aims to be easy to use and intuitive, while also taking advantage of the full capabilities of modern terminals. It comes as one single, batteries-included, static binary with no dependencies, and you can download and use it right now.

As the name indicates, micro aims to be somewhat of a successor to the nano editor by being easy to install and use in a pinch, but micro also aims to be enjoyable to use full time, whether you work in the terminal because you prefer it (like me), or because you need to (over ssh).

Here is a picture of micro editing its source code.

To see more screenshots of micro, showcasing all of the default colorschemes, see here.

Features

• Easy to use and to install
• No dependencies or external files are needed -- just the binary you can download further down the page
• Common keybindings (ctrl-s, ctrl-c, ctrl-v, ctrl-z...)
  • Keybindings can be rebound to your liking
• Sane defaults
  • You shouldn't have to configure much out of the box (and it is extremely easy to configure)
• Splits and tabs
• Extremely good mouse support
  • This means mouse dragging to create a selection, double click to select by word, and triple click to select by line
• Cross platform (It should work on all the platforms Go runs on)
  • Note that while Windows is supported, there are still some bugs that need to be worked out
• Plugin system (plugins are written in Lua)
• Persistent undo
• Automatic linting and error notifications
• Syntax highlighting (for over 75 languages!)
• Colorscheme support
  • By default, micro comes with 16, 256, and true color themes.
• True color support (set the MICRO_TRUECOLOR env variable to 1 to enable it)
• Copy and paste with the system clipboard
• Small and simple
• Easily configurable
• Macros
• Common editor things such as undo/redo, line numbers, unicode support...

Although not yet implemented, I hope to add more features such as autocompletion (#174), and multiple cursors (#5) in the future.

Installation

To install micro, you can download a prebuilt binary, or you can build it from source.

If you want more information about ways to install micro, see this wiki page

Prebuilt binaries

All you need to install micro is one file, the binary itself. It's as simple as that!

Download the binary from the releases page.

On that page you'll see the nightly release, which contains binaries for micro which are built every night, and you'll see all the stable releases with the corresponding binaries.

If you'd like to see more information after installing micro, run micro -version.

Building from source

If your operating system does not have binary, but does run Go, you can build from source.

Make sure that you have Go version 1.5 or greater (Go 1.4 will work if your version supports CGO).

go get -u github.com/zyedidia/micro/...

Linux clipboard support

On Linux, clipboard support requires 'xclip' or 'xsel' command to be installed.

For Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install xclip

If you don't have xclip or xsel, micro will use an internal clipboard for copy and paste, but it won't work with external applications.

Colors and syntax highlighting

If you open micro and it doesn't seem like syntax highlighting is working, this is probably because you are using a terminal which does not support 256 color. Try changing the colorscheme to simple by running > set colorscheme simple.

If you are using the default ubuntu terminal, to enable 256 make sure your TERM variable is set to xterm-256color.

Many of the Windows terminals don't support more than 16 colors, which means that micro's default colorscheme won't look very good. You can either set the colorscheme to simple, or download a better terminal emulator, like mintty.

Plan9, NaCl, Cygwin

Please note that micro uses the amazing tcell library, but this means that micro is restricted to the platforms tcell supports. As a result, micro does not support Plan9, NaCl, and Cygwin (although this may change in the future).

Usage

Once you have built the editor, simply start it by running micro path/to/file.txt or simply micro to open an empty buffer.

Micro also supports creating buffers from stdin:

ifconfig | micro

You can move the cursor around with the arrow keys and mouse.

You can also use the mouse to manipulate the text. Simply clicking and dragging will select text. You can also double click to enable word selection, and triple click to enable line selection.

Documentation and Help

Micro has a built-in help system which you can access by pressing CtrlE and typing help. Additionally, you can view the help files here:

• main help
• keybindings
• commands
• colors
• options
• plugins

I also recommend reading the tutorial for a brief introduction to the more powerful configuration features micro offers.

Contributing

If you find any bugs, please report them! I am also happy to accept pull requests from anyone.

You can use the Github issue tracker to report bugs, ask questions, or suggest new features.

For a more informal setting to discuss the editor, you can join the Gitter chat.