Count characters in CotEditor on Mac

Simply count characters

CotEditor can show the character count in both the status bar and the Document inspector.

The standard character count counts each grapheme cluster, defined as an “extended grapheme cluster” in Unicode. A grapheme cluster is a sequence of one or more Unicode code points treated as a single unit for human. For example, whereas a normal character, such as A, is naturally counted as one character, an emoji consisting of multiple Unicode code points, such as 1️⃣ (U+0031 U+FE0F U+20E3), is also counted as one character.

Count characters using advanced options

1. In the CotEditor app on your Mac, open a document.

2. Choose Text > Advanced Character Count.

3. Select options how to count characters.

4. Click Start.

   To stop counting, choose Text > Stop Advanced Character Count.

With Advanced Character Count, you can count characters in various ways. When you start an advanced character count, a counter appears at the bottom of the editor. The counter updates live according to the options you set in the Advanced Character Count dialog. If part of the text is selected, the counter shows the number of selected characters; otherwise, it shows the total number of characters in the document. You can drag the counter to reposition it.

The options apply across the app. When you change the settings in one editor, the same settings apply to other editors as well.

Note: The advanced character count may affect the processing performance depending on the combination of options, especially in large documents.

See also

• Get information about a document in CotEditor on Mac