SubEthaEdit

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SubEthaEdit is a real-time collaborative text editor for macOS. It lets several people edit the same document at the same time, from the same network or across the Internet, without locking anyone out. The name comes from the Sub-Etha network in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

The project started in 2003 as Hydra, but was renamed SubEthaEdit in late 2004 for legal reasons. The first Hydra version was made quickly to try for an Apple Design Award and it won at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in 2003.

In 2007, TheCodingMonkeys licensed the Subetha Engine to Panic for Coda. SubEthaEdit 4 was released in June 2014 and distributed only through the Mac App Store. SubEthaEdit 5, released in 2019, became free and open source under the MIT license.

Besides standard text editing, SubEthaEdit’s main feature is collaborative editing. It is document-based, non-locking, and non-blocking, so anyone can type anywhere in the document. It uses Bonjour and BEEP to work without setup on a local network, and can also coordinate editing over the Internet. It can be used for distributed pair programming and collaborative note-taking at conferences.