HextEdit
A lightweight native hex editor for macOS that opens almost any file at the byte level—useful when you need to inspect headers, patch data, or verify binary structure without launching a full IDE.
HextEdit by Finn Voorhees is built in Swift and targets developers, reverse engineers, and power users who occasionally need low-level file access. The main view shows hex and ASCII columns with a byte inspector that interprets selection as little- or big-endian signed and unsigned integers, floats, or doubles, displayed in binary, decimal, or hexadecimal. You can insert, delete, copy, paste bytes or strings, zero a selection, jump to an offset, and undo or redo edits. File version history helps recover earlier states when experimenting on disk.
Typical Mac workflow
Open a suspicious download, firmware dump, or custom file format and scroll to a known magic number or string. Use incremental background find to locate byte patterns, integers, or text while the UI stays responsive on large files—the search runs in the background so you can keep working. Reinterpret a suspicious four-byte region as big-endian uint32, patch a flag, and save. For quick checks, HextEdit is often faster than spinning up a heavyweight editor or terminal hex tool, especially on Apple silicon Macs where the universal build runs natively.
The app is sold on the Mac App Store for $12.99 with Family Sharing support. It requires macOS 12.0 or later and is English-only on the listing. Privacy notes indicate usage and diagnostic data may be collected but not linked to your identity. HextEdit is Mac-only and does not replace a debugger or disassembler—it focuses on straightforward hex viewing and editing with a clean, sidebar-driven macOS layout.
Version 1.0.7
Release 1.0.7 (January 24, 2024) is a maintenance update: the App Store What’s New text lists only minor bug fixes, with no published feature changelog. Core capabilities—byte inspector, incremental find, undo/redo, offset navigation, and version history—are unchanged from earlier 1.0.x builds; install 1.0.7 for stability fixes rather than new editing features.
