Caret

Professional text editing for Chrome and Chrome OS

What is Caret?

Caret is an offline, professional text editor extension for Chrome and Chrome OS. Modeled after Sublime Text, its features include tabbed editing, syntax highlighting, project view, 'go to' functionality and multiple keystrokes. It's designed to assist developers, providing a serious programming environment without needing to install another OS.

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Extension stats

By: https://thomaswilburn.net

View on Chrome Web Store

Users: 400,000+

Rating: 4.58 (1,264)

Version: 1.8.25 (Last updated: 2020-06-21)

Creation date: 2020-06-21

Risk impact: Low risk impact

Risk likelihood: Very low risk likelihood

Manifest version: 2

Permissions:

clipboardRead
clipboardWrite
contextMenus
storage
notifications
syncFileSystem
app.window.fullscreen.overrideEsc
{"fileSystem":["write","retainEntries","directory"]}

Size: 2.14M

Email: ca*****@thomaswilburn.net

URLs: Website

Ranking

# 1038 ▼ 4

Other rankings

#2708 in Developer Tools ▲ 1

Other platforms

Not available on Firefox

Not available on Edge

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Extension summary

Analyze keywords

Caret is a graphical text editor modeled on Sublime Text, running completely offline (no Internet connection required) and capable of opening and saving files anywhere on your hard drive. The goal of Caret is to provide a missing portion of the Chrome OS developer story: serious programmer tooling without needing to install a second OS and learn Vim.

Current features:

total offline support--no network connection required, ever
tabbed editing
syntax highlighting for many languages, and lots of color themes
hackable settings files in JSON format
remembers/restores open tabs
open files directly from the Chrome OS file manager
Project view with full-text search and project-specific settings files
Sublime-compatible keymappings, including multiple cursors and selections
Command palette/smart "go to" functionality

Help documentation is available at the GitHub wiki, including a list of possible keyboard/menu commands: https://github.com/thomaswilburn/Caret/wiki

User reviews

These summaries are automatically generated weekly using AI based on recent user reviews. Chrome Web Store does not verify user reviews, so some user reviews may be inaccurate, spammy, or outdated.

Pros

Great text editor specifically for Chrome OS.
Fast performance even on large files.
Supports a variety of programming languages with syntax highlighting.
User-friendly interface with customizable themes.
Free to use.

Cons

Auto-launch feature cannot be disabled.
Some users experience freezing or crashing issues.
Missing features like project directory autoload.
Problems with certain encoding options (e.g., windows-1251).
Limited settings menu for user customization.

Most mentioned

Great for Chromebook users.
Syntax highlighting for multiple programming languages.
Issues with performance and stability.
Requests for dark mode and settings access.
Positive feedback on overall usability and functionality.

User reviews

Not great. Often freezes and loses data more often than I care to put up with. I'm now in search of a replacement given that these issues persistent across two separate devices (a Chrome OS workstation and Chrome OS laptop) and multiple OS versions.

Jessica Theodat, 2024-10-25

Very solid text editor with a lot of themes. Only giving it 4 stars because of the feature which lets you write multiple lines at one with Ctrl+Up/Down; that tends to get annoying very quickly.