Kate

Get an Edge in Editing

Available for Linux, Windows and macOS

Features

Kate is a Feature-Packed Text Editor

Kate is packed with features that will make it easier for you to view and edit all your text files. Kate lets you to edit and view many files at the same time, both in tabs and split views, and comes with a wide variety of plugins, including an embedded terminal that lets you launch console commands directly from Kate, powerful search and replace plugins, and a preview plugin that can show you what your MD, HTML and even SVG will look like.

All Features

Make Your Code Pretty With Syntax Highlighting

Kate supports highlighting for over 300 languages making it easier to read code in almost all programming languages. Kate also understands how brackets works and will help you navigate inside complex code blocks hierarchies. On-the-fly spellchecking is also included and will help you check your text before publishing. Screenshot of Kate with syntax highlighting

Multi-cursor editing

Boost your productivity with a help of multi-cursor and multi-selection features. Kate now has it! Switching from other proprietary text editors and missing your hotkey bindings you used to? You can configure every hotkey in Kate so you don't even have to retrain yourself

Work on Complex Projects Efficiently

Work on multiple files at the same time with split views. Use the project sidebar to navigate your project directory structures and use Kate's smart tabs to quickly access your recently opened documents. The powerful search and replace tool lets you quickly search inside your entire projects.

Screenshot of Kate search and replace tool

Develop your Next Application with Kate

Kate is the perfect tool for programming as it includes autocompletion for many languages with the help of the Language Server Protocol (LSP). The editor has been optimised for editing code and provide scriptable auto indentation, VI input mode, rectangular block selection mode, smart comment and uncomment handling and much more.

Plugins

Kate contains many plugins installed by defaults, making it more powerful than any other text editor. Use the integrated terminal emulator to run commands directly from Kate, execute SQL queries with the SQL extension, use GDB to debug your program, build projects with just one click, and much, much more.

News

Tuesday, 3 June 2025

Kate & Co. in the Microsoft Store

KDE stuff and the Microsoft Store

Kate is in the Microsoft Store since 2019.

Since that time you can install it easily from here and the store will allow you to keep our application updated.

Kate is not the only KDE application there, other stuff uploaded under the KDE e.V. umbrella can be found here, this includes KDE Connect and Okular.

We have now better documentation and tooling for store submissions, the last update of Kate to 25.04 was, beside the local testing of the build if it is not broken in normal use, the press of one button.

Friday, 30 May 2025

Going to Akademy?

In September 2024, the annual KDE conference Akademy was held in Würzburg. I've been to all Akademies from 2004-2020 (except 2005). Then came Covid, private life, etc. So it was kind of special that I finally made it to Würzburg again, which was just a ~2h ride away by train. And it was a good decision: Since many KDE contributors (also those who stayed with KDE a for a log time) came to this Akademy. It was a good opportunity to meet old friends again.

Monday, 2 December 2024

Kate - 1500 accepted merge requests!

I just looked at our GitLab page today and thought: Amazing!

I thank you all for the great contributions of the last years.

Let's hope we see even more contributions in the future.

If you are unsure how to contribute, just take a look at the existing merged stuff as reference.

The upcoming 24.12 release will be a good one, we did polish Kate a lot.

Monday, 26 August 2024

Kate & Fonts

With the Qt 6.7 release, Qt introduced a wide range of improvement for the text rendering and font shaping.

One element of this is that you can now configure OpenType font features.

Many of the 'new cool' programming fonts have such features integrated. That includes both free fonts like Cascadia Code or paid fonts like MonoLisa.

Let's use the features of Cascadia Code as an example, that is the stuff they promote on their GitHub page:

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