• Added an option to disable Writing Tools (available on devices with Apple Intelligence enabled only).
• Improved keyboard behavior when creating a new file on iPhone.
• You can now dismiss the on-screen keyboard by scrolling down in the code editor (enabled by default on iPhone, disabled on iPad).
• The edit menu (with actions like Cut, Copy, and Paste) now appears faster and more reliably – for example, when selecting text or tapping line numbers.

Improved Creation of New Files

New files can now be created with just two taps: After tapping the “+” button, a file name is suggested (e.g. “Untitled.md”), which can be accepted directly with the “Create” button.

The file extension can now optionally be selected from a menu. This menu can be customized via Settings → New File.

The preselected file extension can also be configured in settings.

Custom HTML and CSS for Markdown Preview

You can now customize the Markdown preview with both custom CSS and HTML. Save your custom styles in the file “Local Files/#Textastic/markdown.css” and your custom HTML in “Local Files/#Textastic/markdown_head.html.” The web preview will use these files when rendering Markdown, allowing you to load JavaScript libraries like MathJax or Highlight.js.

To make customization even easier, buttons have been added to Settings → Web Preview to open “markdown.css” and “markdown_head.html” directly in the editor.

Other Improvements

• Improved (S)FTP upload and download speed over fast network connections by using larger send and receive buffers.
• The Wi-Fi IP address for the WebDAV server is now determined in a different way. This should fix a rare problem where the WebDAV server could not be activated even though Wi-Fi was available.

Refreshed User Interface

New icons and modern look in all parts of the app. Uses menus in more places, for example when tapping the button and when changing the sort order of file lists.

New horizontally scrollable tab bar. It's now easier to re-arrange tabs with drag & drop.

Improved Swift Support

Added a completely new Swift syntax definition with support for modern Swift including async/await.

Swift classes, structs, enums, functions, properties etc. are now shown in the symbol list.

Easier Upload

Upload files to any remote connection using the new → “Upload To…” menu without leaving the editor.

Other Improvements

• Fixed text selection and dictation issues on iOS and iPadOS 17.
• Improved behavior of “Open…” and “Add External Folder…” commands.
• Improved external folder support.
• Fixed performance issues when many files were stored in the iCloud location.

Find in Files

You can now search for text or regular expressions in all files of a folder and its subfolders:

Tap the search field above a file listing and change the search mode from “Filename” to “Content”. In the search settings, you can choose to search for text or a regular expression. You can also set whether the search should be case sensitive, diacritic sensitive, and whether to search for whole words only.

Start the search by pressing the Return key after entering the search term.

Searching multiple files works in Local Files, iCloud and external folders (such as other folders in iCloud Drive or Git repositories in Working Copy).

Other Improvements

• Added keyboard shortcuts for Find Next (Cmd-G), Find Previous (Cmd-Shift-G) and Find and Replace (Cmd-Option-F).
• Improved search settings UI.
• Search results in the code editor now have a more modern style.
• Updated the manual.

Redesigned Adding New Files and Folders

• When creating files and folders using the “+” button below file lists, you can now see and change the location in which the new file or folder will be created. This is especially useful when you invoke this dialog using the Cmd-N keyboard shortcut and you don't remember the last folder you navigated to.
• There is a new “Import” tab that you can use to import files using the iOS document picker, and to import images using the new iOS image picker introduced in iOS 14.
• Tap and hold or right click the “+” button to show a menu that allows you to directly invoke “New File”, “New Folder”, “Import Files”, or “Import Images”.

Improved Web Preview Server

• The web server for the web preview is now started when the app is launched instead of when the web preview is first shown.
• The web server for the web preview now uses port 8080 by default instead of a random port. This allows you to bookmark preview URLs in Safari when using “Preview in Safari”. You can change the port or use a random port in Settings -> Web Preview.

Remote Connections

• Rewritten UI of remote connection settings ((S)FTP, WebDAV, Google Drive, Dropbox) with better support for Dynamic Type and VoiceOver.
• Updated to the new Dropbox OAuth API that uses short lived access tokens and refresh tokens. The old Dropbox API will stop returning long-lived access tokens on September 30th, 2021. With this update, Textastic is ready for this change. Existing access tokens are not impacted.

Other Improvements

• Rewritten file properties and search settings with better support for Dynamic Type and VoiceOver, and some other improvements.
• Rewritten UI of WebDAV server settings and moved it from the bottom toolbar below file listings to settings. The WebDAV server button is still shown below the list of locations (Local Files, iCloud, external folders…).
• You can now share the WebDAV server URL by tapping on it.

Commenting Code

• New keyboard shortcuts “Toggle Comment” (Cmd-/) and “Toggle Block Comment” (Cmd-Option-/).
• You can also select text and choose “Comment” or “Remove Comment” from the editing menu.

Improved Text Editing

• New setting “Close Brackets and Quotes”: Automatically inserts a matching closing character when typing an opening bracket or quote. This works for the following character pairs: "", '', (), [], {}.
• New setting “Indent Based on Syntax”: Automatically indent code when typing, based on its syntax. For example, increases the indentation when pressing Return after an opening curly brace (“{”) in C or an opening tag in HTML and decreases indentation after a closing curly brace (“}”) or a closing tag.
• New “Line Height” setting that you can use to adjust the spacing between lines (defaults to 110%).
• New setting “Gutter” -> “Indicate Selection”: The currently selected lines can be indicated in the gutter if line numbers are enabled.

Dark Mode Improvements

• You can now select a separate code editor theme and keyboard appearance for Dark Mode.
• Markdown preview now uses a dark color scheme in Dark Mode.

Dark Mode

Added full support for the native iOS 13 Dark Mode. That means that every part of the app now supports a dark appearance - including system views such as the document picker, context menus, alerts, and share sheets.

You can either match the system appearance or always use a light or dark appearance. For the dark appearance, you can choose between “Blue”, “Yellow”, and “Gray”.

Multiple Windows on iPadOS 13

On iPad, several windows of Textastic can now be open at the same time. Do one of the following to open a new window:

• While Textastic is open, swipe up from the bottom edge of the screen to show the Dock and drag Textastic's app icon from the Dock to the left or right edge of the screen.
• Drag a file from one of Textastic's file lists or a tab to the left or right edge of the screen.
• Show the context menu of a file or tab and choose “Open in New Window”.

Context Menus for Files and Tabs

Bring up the context menu of a file to show all commands previously available only through the “Edit” button as well as new commands like “Open in New Window” and “Copy Path”.

The context menu for tabs allows you to close the selected tab, close all other tabs, keep the tab open (pin), and move the tab to a new window.

Easier Customization

• Added “Reload Customizations” to Settings -> Other. This allows you to reload syntax definitions, themes, and code completions without quitting and restarting the app. All open files in the “Local Files/#Textastic” folder are automatically saved before reloading customizations.
• Added new customizable keyboard shortcuts for “Reload Customizations” (Cmd-Shift-R) and “Show Scope” (Ctrl-Shift-P).

This means that you can, for example, edit a theme or code completion file and simply press Cmd-Shift-R to save and reload it, enabling easy customization.

And More

• Fixed: Some user-installed monospaced fonts like “JetBrains Mono” and “IPA Gothic” were not shown in the list of fonts.
• Improved handling of Emoji characters in the code editor.