TextEdit User Guide
Open -a TextEdit is that you have no control on the TextEdit.app modes: Plain Text or RichText. If you try to open an HTML file, TextEdit will open it in the Rich Text mode, not in the Plain Text mode, as expected. Then switching to the Plain Text mode will not show the HTML tags. I could not find a Terminal command to activate the Open. Jan 09, 2020 TextEdit is the default text editor in macOS, and it’s just as barebones as the default text editor in Windows, Notepad. Naturally, many Mac users sooner or later look for an alternative, and they often stumble upon Notepad. Textedit theFiletoEdit.txt. The difference between this and the other answer, is you can easily remember it when you want it. Typing textand Tabto autocomplete it will make it instantly available. For those with a bit more bash background, who want the reasoning without having to fuss with figuring it out.
Textedit Mac Terminal App
You can use TextEdit to edit or display HTML documents as you’d see them in a browser (images may not appear), or in code-editing mode.
Note: By default, curly quotes and em dashes are substituted for straight quotes and hyphens when editing HTML as formatted text. (Code-editing mode uses straight quotes and hyphens.) To learn how to change this preference, see New Document options.
Create an HTML file
In the TextEdit app on your Mac, choose File > New, then choose Format > Make Plain Text.
Enter the HTML code.
Choose File > Save, type a name followed by the extension .html (for example, enter index.html), then click Save.
When prompted about the extension to use, click “Use .html.”
View an HTML document
In the TextEdit app on your Mac, choose File > Open, then select the document.
Click Options at the bottom of the TextEdit dialog, then select “Ignore rich text commands.”
Click Open.
Always open HTML files in code-editing mode
In the TextEdit app on your Mac, choose TextEdit > Preferences, then click Open and Save.
Select “Display HTML files as HTML code instead of formatted text.”
Change how HTML files are saved
Set preferences that affect how HTML files are saved in TextEdit.
In the TextEdit app on your Mac, choose TextEdit > Preferences, then click Open and Save.
Below HTML Saving Options, choose a document type, a style setting for CSS, and an encoding.
Select “Preserve white space” to include code that preserves blank areas in documents.
If you open an HTML file and don’t see the code, TextEdit is displaying the file the same way a browser would (as formatted text).