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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-16T07:55:46+00:00

Is there a way to make files opened for editing in the terminal open

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Is there a way to make files opened for editing in the terminal open in Textedit instead?

For example, where a command might open a file for editing (like git commit), instead of opening that file in vim or emacs, it would open in Textedit (or perhaps another text editing application of your choosing, such as Coda or Sublime).

And as a bonus question, is there any way to specifically configure git to automatically open the file created after running git commit in an editor from the applications directory?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Most programs will check the $EDITOR environment variable, so you can set that to the path of TextEdit in your bashrc. Git will use this as well.

    How to do this:

    • Add the following to your ~/.bashrc file:
      export EDITOR="/Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit"
    • or just type the following command into your Terminal:
      echo "export EDITOR=\"/Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit\"" >> ~/.bashrc

    If you are using zsh, use ~/.zshrc instead of ~/.bashrc.

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