Getting Started
Caxton is a native macOS editor built for the files other editors refuse: multi-gigabyte logs, million-row CSVs, single-line minified bundles. This manual covers every feature; each page shows the real editor, not illustrations.
Requirements & installation
- macOS 13.0 or later, Apple Silicon or Intel.
- Download the disk image from caxton.app, open it, and drag Caxton to your Applications folder. The app is notarized by Apple.
- Every plan starts with a 7-day free trial, no credit card. See pricing.
Opening your first file
Open files the way you open anything on a Mac: drag a file onto the Dock icon, double-click it in Finder, or press ⌘O inside the app. There is no size limit and no import step; Caxton memory-maps the file and starts indexing in the background while you work.
A 10 GB production log, open and fully usable. The status bar tracks the background index; this one finished all 80,610,954 lines in under 20 seconds.
Nothing in Caxton waits for the index. You can scroll, search, and edit the moment the window appears; features that need complete line data simply stream in as the index catches up.
The window at a glance
- Toolbar: Save, Find, Filter Lines, and the CSV grid toggle live on the left; tail-mode documents add a Follow button. Rearrange or hide it with View ▸ Customize Toolbar….
- Tab strip: every open document in one window, with instant tab switching.
- Gutter: line numbers, bookmark badges. It stays pinned during horizontal scroll.
- Minimap: a document overview on the right for files up to 500 MB.
- Status bar: cursor position, open mode, encoding and line endings, live line count and size, and indexing/parsing progress.
Where to go next
- Opening Large Files: open modes, the Large File Controller, follow-tail.
- Find & Replace: millions of matches in about a second.
- Filtering: grep you can scroll.
- CSV Workbench: the spreadsheet grid for huge delimited files.
- Menu Reference: every command in every menu, explained.