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Monaco Editor VS CodeMirror

Compare Monaco Editor VS CodeMirror and see what are their differences

Monaco Editor logo Monaco Editor

A browser based code editor

CodeMirror logo CodeMirror

CodeMirror is a versatile text editor implemented in JavaScript for the browser.
  • Monaco Editor Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-23
  • CodeMirror Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-07-19

Monaco Editor features and specs

  • Rich Features
    Monaco Editor provides a wide array of features like syntax highlighting, IntelliSense, code folding, etc., making it a powerful option for code editing.
  • Extensibility
    The editor is highly extensible, allowing developers to customize and extend its functionalities to suit their specific needs.
  • VS Code Integration
    As the core editor used in Visual Studio Code, Monaco Editor inherits many of the capabilities and optimizations from VS Code, ensuring robust performance.
  • Web-Based
    Being a web-based editor, it can be easily integrated into web applications, making it highly accessible across different platforms.
  • Large Community
    Monaco Editor benefits from a large community and strong backing from Microsoft, ensuring ongoing development and support.

Possible disadvantages of Monaco Editor

  • Large Bundle Size
    The initial bundle size of the Monaco Editor can be quite large, which may impact the loading time of web applications using it.
  • Complexity
    Due to its rich feature set, the Monaco Editor can be complex to integrate and configure for new developers.
  • Browser Limitations
    Since it is a web-based tool, it might face performance limitations or issues in specific browsers or older versions.
  • Limited Mobile Support
    Monaco Editor is not optimized for mobile usage, potentially leading to a subpar experience on mobile devices.

CodeMirror features and specs

  • Extensible
    CodeMirror is highly customizable with a rich API that allows developers to extend its functionality to meet specific needs. It supports a wide variety of languages and can be adapted to different editing scenarios.
  • Lightweight
    CodeMirror is designed to be efficient and lightweight, suitable for integration into web applications without significantly impacting performance.
  • Wide Language Support
    It offers support for many programming languages out of the box, which makes it versatile for different programming tasks.
  • Active Community
    There is an active community of developers contributing to CodeMirror, which ensures regular updates, improvements, and bug fixes.
  • Embeddable
    CodeMirror can be easily embedded into existing web pages or web applications, enabling developers to provide a rich text editor experience.

Possible disadvantages of CodeMirror

  • Complex Configuration
    While CodeMirror is highly customizable, setting it up and configuring it to fit specific requirements can be complex and sometimes overwhelming for new users.
  • Minimal Default Features
    Out of the box, CodeMirror provides a basic editor without many advanced features, requiring extra configuration and plugins to add functionality like autocompletion or linting.
  • Learning Curve
    For developers new to CodeMirror, there may be a learning curve involved in understanding its structure and API, especially when creating custom plugins or features.
  • Performance on Large Files
    CodeMirror can experience performance issues when dealing with very large files or extremely complex documents, which may affect its suitability for all projects.
  • Limited Built-in Mobile Support
    CodeMirror’s default interface is not inherently optimized for touch interactions, making it less ideal for mobile or tablet editing without additional customization.

Monaco Editor videos

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CodeMirror videos

How to get value of CodeMirror text editor - step by step guide | CodeMirror #02

More videos:

  • Review - HTMLHint Linter Codemirror Integration

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Monaco Editor and CodeMirror)
Text Editors
60 60%
40% 40
Developer Tools
81 81%
19% 19
Rich Text Editor
0 0%
100% 100
IDE
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Monaco Editor might be a bit more popular than CodeMirror. We know about 49 links to it since March 2021 and only 45 links to CodeMirror. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Monaco Editor mentions (49)

  • Integrate VS Code editor in your project! Monaco Editor 🚀
    Monaco editor by Microsoft @monaco-editor/react Happy coding! 😃. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • An experiment in UI density created with Svelte
    VS Code Editor which is based on Electron, is really fast, even with large codebase & many open tabs. Their monaco engine (https://microsoft.github.io/monaco-editor/) uses custom, virtual code processor that is optimized for surgically updating underlying DOM. It also uses WebGL + canvas rendering to show minimap of the file. Similar approach (custom virtual processor) is leveraged by Google docs/sheets. Canvas... - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
  • A structured note-taking app for personal use
    Fyi, if you are ever looking for a fun project you might be able to implement this. The vscode editor source is available as a library https://microsoft.github.io/monaco-editor/. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • GIGO and VS-code: the Battle With Microsoft
    VScode uses the monaco-editor to display all editor screens in vscode including the markdown editor. A simple solution is to use the in built markdown file editor and call it a day. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • NPM workspace and vite - Read dependency build output (d.ts file)
    So lets say the project consists of two packages Lib and App in which Lib is a library and App is the frontend app which depends on Lib. Now I want to display a monaco powered code editor in App which has has access to all types of Lib. This means that I have to somehow read the *.d.ts file of Lib as a string to set it as "extra lib" for monaco. Source: over 1 year ago
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CodeMirror mentions (45)

  • 25 Project Ideas from Beginner to Advanced with Open Source Contributions
    NOTE: CodeMirror 6 exists, and is more mobile-friendly, more accessible, better designed, and much more actively maintained. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Integrating the ruff language server
    This post covers some background on the Language Server Protocol and then goes into a demonstration of how to integrate the ruff language server into a simple code editor built using CodeMirror. The code for the demonstration is availiable on github. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • Adding a Code Editor to your React App
    From the official CodeMirror documentation:. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Eloquent JavaScript 4th edition (2024)
    For those that don't know the author, Marijn Haverbeke, is the creator of CodeMirror (code editor) and later ProseMirror (text editor). https://codemirror.net/ https://prosemirror.net/. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • Show HN: Heynote – A Dedicated Scratchpad for Developers
    Performance is mostly handled by CodeMirror (https://codemirror.net/), the underlying editor that Heynote is built upon. It seems to handle quite large buffers well. Where I have seen some minor performance issues is when working with very large blocks in certain language modes. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Monaco Editor and CodeMirror, you can also consider the following products

VS Code - Build and debug modern web and cloud applications, by Microsoft

ACE (Ajax Code Editor) - Focused and built towards coders, web designers, and web builders, ACE (Ajax Code Editor) can help...

CSS Scan - Instantly check or copy computed CSS from any element for only ~95$

ProseMirror - A toolkit for building rich-text editors on the web

CodePen - A front end web development playground.

Quill - Powerful, API-driven rich text editor