Scratch is now elementary Code

More than a name change

In 2011, elementary debuted our own “text editor.” We’ve shipped it in elementary OS ever since as Scratch, the default app for handling any plain text files, but it’s evolved into more than a simple notepad.

…but what is a Text Editor?

We soon realized that the premise of a “text editor” is kind of silly; the fact that an app handles plain text files doesn’t inform how it’s used. Is it for note-taking? There are lots of features we could add for that (check lists, notebooks, highlighting, etc.). Is it a last-resort utility that nobody really means to open? We could strip it down to hardly anything if that’s the case.

For Scratch, we always intended for it to be a code editor, not just a generic text editor. We’re not trying to build a note-taking app or stripped down utility. In fact, we use Scratch on elementary OS to build elementary OS.

Focused on Code

By rebranding to Code, it lets us focus on what we intended from the start: building a great native code editor for developers on elementary OS. It also lets us reduce confusion between our app and the visual programming language also known as Scratch. :)