GNU nano

GNU nano is a small, friendly text editor inspired by Pico, the default editor in the Pine email client. Originally created by Chris Allegretta in 1999 as a free software replacement for Pico (which was proprietary), nano became a GNU project in 2001 and is now maintained by Benno Schulenberg. GNU nano is designed for simplicity and ease of use, making it the recommended editor for beginners who find Vim and Emacs intimidating. It displays all available commands at the bottom of the screen with the Control key notation (e.g., ^G Get Help, ^O Write Out, ^X Exit, ^K Cut, ^U Uncut, ^W Where Is, ^R Read File, ^C Cur Pos), eliminating the need to memorize commands or consult documentation. Despite its simplicity, nano includes many powerful features: syntax highlighting for over 80 languages and file formats (via nanorc syntax files), unlimited undo and redo, interactive search and replace with regex support, go-to line and column positioning, automatic indentation, soft text wrapping (wrapping long lines at word boundaries without modifying the file), spell checking via external tools (ispell, aspell, hunspell), mouse support (clicking to position the cursor, clicking on the shortcut bar to execute commands), configurable key bindings, color schemes, backup file creation, macros and repeat commands, multiple file buffers (editing multiple files simultaneously with Meta+left/right to switch), cut-to-end mode, marking text for selection, justify text (paragraph reflow), and tab completion for file names. As of 2026, nano version 8.x requires ncurses and is licensed under GPL-3.0.