Best IDEs for C++ on MacOS

Recommendations: 8 | Last Updated: Sept. 19, 2022 (2 years)

CLion CLion

CLion is an intelligent cross-platform C/C++ IDE that makes sure your code conforms to coding guidelines, including formatting, naming, and more. CLion features tools for code generation, allowing you to generate boilerplate code instantly, implement functions with simple shortcuts and generating constructors and destructors, getters and setters, and equality, relational, and stream output operators.

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Xcode Xcode

Xcode is Apple's premiere development environment for MacOS. At the heart of the Xcode tools package is the Xcode IDE which provide the tools you need to reate, debug, and optimize your applications. Xcode provides customizable font sizes for the navigator, streamlined code completion, and document tabs. Which allows you to build universal apps with support for MacOS and Mac with Apple Silicon.

Visual Studio Code Visual Studio Code

A free and open source IDE based on Electron and Atom, developed by Microsoft. Visual Studio Code or VS Code is an extensible IDE or coding editor that is loved by many developers around the globe. The editor combines a streamlined UI with advanced code assistance, code nagivation and intellisense.

Qt Creator Qt Creator

Qt Creator is a cross-platform integrated development environment (IDE) built for the maximum developer experience. Qt Creator runs on macOS, Linux and Windows desktop operating systems, and allows developers to create applications across desktop, mobile, and embedded platforms.

Apache NetBeans Apache NetBeans

Apache NetBeans is free and open-source IDE that combines development environment, a tooling platform and application framework into one package. With Apache NetBeans developer can build applications with Java, JavaScript, PHP, HTML5, CSS, and other languages. Apache NetBeans also features code highlighting, both syntactically and semantically, while also letting developers refactor code with a wide range of powerful and handy tools. The software is openly developed by the Apache Foundation and is available for macOS, Linux, Windows and BSD.

Eclipse Eclipse

Eclipse IDE is a leading open platform for professional developers. With the Eclipse IDE you can write applications in your favorite programming language with confidence.

Sublime Text Sublime Text

A loved text editor and IDE for web developers and designers that provides unmatched responsiveness. Sublime Text provides a wide selection of editing command including indenting or un-indenting, paragraph reformatting, line joining , multiple selections, regular expression search and replace, incremental find as you type, and preserve case on replace. The IDE can also be extended with community built packages to further improve language detection, auto-complete and intellisense features.

Geany Geany

A free and open-source lightweight GUI text editor using Scintilla and GTK with basic IDE features. Geany is designed and developed with performance in mind, and provides limited dependency on separate packages or external libraries on Linux. Geany is available for a wide variety of operating systems including BSD, Linux, macOS, Solaris and Windows.