Atom
Atom was a free, open-source, hackable text editor created by GitHub and built on the Electron framework, before being sunset in December 2022 in favor of Visual Studio Code.
Definition
Atom was a free, open-source, hackable text editor created by GitHub and built on the Electron framework, before being sunset in December 2022 in favor of Visual Studio Code.
Overview
Launched in 2014 and marketed as 'a hackable text editor for the 21st century,' Atom helped popularize building desktop applications with web technologies through Electron, a framework GitHub created for the editor and later open-sourced for broader use. Atom offered a built-in package manager, thousands of community themes and plugins, and Teletype for real-time collaborative editing. Despite a loyal following, GitHub — by then owned by Microsoft — archived Atom in 2022 as its own VS Code became the dominant free code editor, and many former Atom users migrated to VS Code or terminal-based editors like Vim.
Key Features
- Built entirely on Electron, using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for the UI
- Package manager with thousands of community themes and plugins
- Teletype feature for real-time collaborative editing
- Cross-platform support for Windows, macOS, and Linux
- Deep GitHub integration for Git operations inside the editor