Joe's Own Editor
The facts below are what the maker publishes about Joe's Own Editor, checked and dated. Our editors have not written about it yet.
Plans and prices
From Joe's Own Editor's own pricing page, checked 11 Oct 2026.
| Plan | Price | What it gives you |
|---|---|---|
| JOE | Free | GNU General Public License (GPL) |
The facts
Each one read from Joe's Own Editor's own pages, with the date it was checked.
What it does
- Audience
- SourceForge lists the intended audience as developers, desktop end users, and system administrators, with a console or terminal user interface.checked 11 Oct 2026
- Build
- JOE is written in C, lists libc as its only dependency, and can be built with configure and make install.checked 11 Oct 2026
- Column editing
- Yeschecked 24 Sep 2026
- Download integrity
- The SourceForge download page displays a SHA-256 checksum and says the JOE 4.8 archive was scanned for malware.checked 11 Oct 2026
- Editing styles
- The site describes JOE as combining WordStar-like editing keys and feel with some GNU-EMACS key bindings and features.checked 11 Oct 2026
- Editing tools
- Features listed include multi-file search and replace, regular expressions, unlimited undo and redo, keyboard macros, and block operations.checked 11 Oct 2026
- History
- The site says JOE has been around since 1988 and comes standard with many Linux distributions.checked 11 Oct 2026
- Integrations
- The site lists spell-check commands invoking aspell or ispell and says JOE can run UNIX commands such as grep and find from within the editor.checked 11 Oct 2026
- Maintainer
- The site says JOE is maintained by its original author Joseph Allen, along with people who submit bug reports, feature suggestions, and patches.checked 11 Oct 2026
- Notable limits
- The site says JOE does not have vertical windows, folding, built-in FTP, an X-Window version, or a debugger interface.checked 11 Oct 2026
- Product
- JOE is a full featured terminal-based screen editor distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).checked 11 Oct 2026
- Spell checking
- Its spell-check commands invoke aspell or ispell; the site says background spell checking is not available.checked 11 Oct 2026
- Syntax and text support
- JOE supports UTF-8, optional UTF-8 file auto-detection, and syntax highlighting for more than 40 languages.checked 11 Oct 2026
- Terminal features
- JOE supports mouse input, shell windows, multiple windows, pipes, and termcap or terminfo terminal capabilities.checked 11 Oct 2026
Money
- Free plan
- Yeschecked 24 Sep 2026
Where it runs
- Macro recording
- Yeschecked 24 Sep 2026
- Supported platforms
- Linux,macOS (Unix-like systems)checked 24 Sep 2026
- Windows download
- The official site links to a JOE for Windows 4.6 download.checked 11 Oct 2026
Alternatives to Joe's Own Editor
- 1

Calmly Writer
Free planAndroidWebLinuxmacOS8.6Free plan - 2

Zed
Free planLinuxmacOSWindows8.3From $10 a month - 3

Visual Studio Code
Free planWebLinuxmacOSWindows8.2Free plan - 4
Neovim
Free planAndroidAPILinuxmacOS8.1Free plan - 5
Geany
Free planOpen sourceLinuxmacOSWindows8.1Free plan - 6
GNU Emacs
Free planAndroidLinuxmacOSWindows8.0Free plan
