Caxton Reviews

Caxton Description

Caxton is a native macOS large file text editor and CSV editor in one: a workbench for logs, CSVs, TSVs, JSON, SQL dumps, and exports of any size. One app instead of a text editor, a spreadsheet, and a log viewer: open the file and work. Every delimited file opens as text and as a typed grid; edits made in either view show in the other, and saving writes the same file back. Nothing is imported, converted, or uploaded.

It memory maps the file instead of loading it into RAM. On an M1 Max a 50 GB log (403 million lines) opens immediately, indexes in 75 s, and memory stays under 160 MB throughout. A search returns 8,059,509 matches counted exactly; Replace All across 1,574,039 sites is one undo step. A 10 million row CSV (5.1 GB) opens as a sortable, filterable grid in 4.4 s, past Excel's row limit. Every number, including a run on a base 8 GB M1 Air, is published with its methodology at caxton.app/docs/benchmarks.

Text: find and replace with exact counts and regex, Batch Replace, Find in Files, filters that keep line numbers, a log viewer mode with Go to Time and severity filters, follow mode, side by side compare, multi-cursor editing, snippets, clipboard history, 18 encodings. CSV: typed sorting, filter by value, fill series, remove duplicates, split and combine columns, change the delimiter, fixed-width to columns, cell editing in place.

Native AppKit and Swift, no Electron. Files never leave the Mac: no upload, no cloud processing, no telemetry. Apple Silicon and Intel, macOS 13 or later, a 5 MB notarized download, also installable with Homebrew.

Built for data engineers, SREs, DBAs, and analysts. 7-day trial, no card. After it, opening, searching, filtering, and copying stay free; a license adds editing and saving.