awesome-hex-editors

A curated and enriched list of awesome hexadecimal editors for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Hex Editors

All programs listed bellow have the basic capabilities expected from an hex editor such as viewing, editing, and searching. The number of highlight tags in this list is not a rank. I just want to help you choosing an hex editor that fits your needs.

Platform icons mean 🪟 - Windows, 🐧 - Linux (commonly include other Unix-like operating systems such as FreeBSD, Unix itself, etc), 🍎 - macOS. However, some authors provide source code only, so it's unclear how many platforms are supported.

Text User Interface (TUI) programs run on the terminal (think of Windows Command Prompt or Linux terminal), but they work interactively. They're usually fast and good to edit things over SSH for example. In contrast, Graphical User Interface (GUI) programs are heavier, but usually bring more features, mouse support, etc.

Licenses such as GPL, Apache, BSD, and MIT are open source licenses, meaning the programs are free to use, modify and share.

The Since column contains the date of the first public release of the software. A tilde means I couldn't find a strong evidence of the actual date, so I guessed it based on information gathered on the internet.

Project status 🚀 means the project is active, while 🧊 means I haven't seen a new release in a while, so it might be discontinued. However, a discontinued app does not necessarily means it's bad. The developers might just consider it mature enough. Best thing to do is try it out and see for yourself.

Hex Viewers/Dumpers

These Command Line Interface (CLI) tools can't edit files, but they are good to quickly view their contents from the terminal. Many people have written hex viewers out there, so this is far from being a complete list, but I tried to cover the most common ones:

Highlight tags

This is a set of tags I came up with to quickly highlight interesting features from the hex editors. It does not cover all of their features though.

Notes

• Many file editors support hex editing, i.e. Vim (it uses xxd), VScode (with extensions), etc. Reverse engineering tools such as IDA Pro, Binary Ninja, radare2, and others are also shipped with hex editors. This list focus on "pure" hex editors though.
• I didn't include old hex editors for MS-DOS, but they're nice! There's a list here. I have a biew fork you can compile to feel old if you want.

Contributing

This list is of course not complete. There are hundreds (thousands?) of hex editors out there. If your awesome editor of choice is missing, feel free to send a PR. Please fill in all columns to keep this file informative.