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.

Name	Highlight tags	Platform	Interface	License	Origin	Since	Status
[N] Curses Hexedit	calculator	🐧	TUI	GPL-2.0	🇺🇸	Aug 1998	🧊
010 Editor	bookmarks calculator data-inspector diffing disassembly multi-file plugins projects scripting templates	🪟🐧🍎	GUI	Commercial	🇨🇦	Sep 2003	🚀
bvi	multi-file vim-like	🐧🍎	TUI	GPL	🇦🇹	Jan 2001	🚀
dhex	bookmarks calculator diffing	🐧🍎	TUI	GPL-2.0	🇩🇪	Mar 2004	🧊
dz6	bookmarks calculator comments themes vim-like	🪟🐧🍎	TUI	GPL-3.0	🇧🇷	Nov 2025	🚀
fhex	data-inspector diffing disassembly templates	🪟🐧🍎	GUI	GPL-3.0	🇮🇹	Oct 2019	🚀
FileInsight	bookmarks calculator data-inspector executable-aware multi-file plugins scripting templates	🪟	GUI	Freeware	🇺🇸	~2006	🧊
GHex	bookmarks data-inspector multi-file	🐧	GUI	GPL-2.0	🇸🇮	Jun 1998	🚀
GNU poke	calculator data-inspector multi-file repl scripting	🐧🍎	CLI/TUI	GPL-3.0	🇪🇸	Feb 2021	🚀
Helium Hex Editor	bookmarks diffing disassembly executable-aware multi-file plugins templates	🪟	GUI	Commercial	🇫🇷	2015	🚀
Hex Workshop	bookmarks calculator data-inspector diffing multi-file plugins scripting templates	🪟	GUI	Commercial	🇺🇸	May 1995	🧊
hexedit		🐧	TUI	Apache-2.0	🇮🇳	Aug 2020	🚀
Hexer	calculator multi-file vim-like	🐧🍎	TUI	BSD-2-Clause	🇩🇪	Apr 2009	🚀
HexFiend	bookmarks data-inspector data-inspector multi-file templates	🍎	GUI	BSD-2-Clause	🇺🇸	~Jul 2014	🚀
Hexinator	data-inspector diffing scripting templates	🪟🐧	GUI	Commercial	🇺🇸	~2009	🚀
HexPatch	comments disassembly scripting	🪟🐧🍎	TUI	MIT	🇮🇹	Apr 2024	🚀
Hexplorer	bookmarks data-inspector disassembly macros templates	🪟	GUI	GPL-2.0	🇵🇱	2002	🧊
hextazy	data-inspector vim-like	🪟🐧🍎	TUI	MIT	?	Jul 2024	🚀
HexWalk	data-inspector diffing templates	🪟🐧🍎	GUI	GPL-3.0	🇮🇹	May 2023	🚀
hexxed	data-inspector	🌐	Web	Freeware	🇩🇪	Jul 2014	🚀
Hiew	bookmarks calculator comments diffing disassembly executable-aware macros multi-file plugins themes	🪟	TUI	Commercial	🇷🇺	~1991	🚀
HT Editor	calculator disassembly executable-aware projects	🪟🐧🍎	TUI	GPLv2	🇩🇪	Jan 2000	🧊
HxD	bookmarks diffing disassembly multi-file	🪟	GUI	Freeware	🇩🇪	~2002	🧊
Hyx	vim-like	🐧🍎	TUI	MIT	🇩🇪	Jan 2017	🧊
ImHex	bookmarks calculator comments data-inspector diffing disassembly multi-file plugins templates themes	🪟🐧🍎	GUI	GPL-2.0	🇨🇭	Nov 2020	🚀
Okteta	bookmarks data-inspector multi-file plugins scripting templates themes	🐧	GUI	GPL-3.0	🇩🇪	2003	🚀
rehex	comments data-inspector disassembly multi-file templates themes	🪟🐧🍎	GUI	GPL-3.0	🇬🇧	Mar 2020	🚀
Synalyze It!	not analyzed yet	🍎	GUI	Commercial	🇺🇸	Ago 2010	🚀
Teehee	data-inspector vim-like	🪟🐧🍎	TUI	Apache-2.0	🇫🇮	Apr 2021	🧊
WinHex	not analyzed yet	🪟	GUI	Commercial	🇩🇪	~Feb 2000	🚀
wxHexEditor	data-inspector diffing disassembly	🪟🐧🍎	GUI	GPL-2.0	🇹🇷	Jun 2008	🧊
XVI32	bookmarks data-inspector plugins scripting	🪟	GUI	Freeware	🇩🇪	~1996	🧊

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:

Name	Description	Platform	Usage example	Status
heksa		🪟🐧🍎	heksa -l 32 <file>	🚀
hexdump/hd		🐧🍎	hd -n32 <file>	🚀
hexyl		🪟🐧🍎	hexyl -n32 <file>	🚀
od	Likely present in any Linux/Unix system	🐧🍎	od -Ax -tx1 -N32 <file>	🚀
VBinDiff	Diff tool, but can view single file as well	🪟🐧	vbindiff <file1> [file2]	🧊
xxd	Comes with Vim	🪟🐧🍎	xxd -g1 -l16 <file>	🚀

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.

Tag	Description
bookmarks	Users can add (named) bookmarks to file offsets
calculator	Embedded calculator that usually interacts with the file content
comments	User can add comments to file offsets
data-inspector	Interpret data using different perspectives, i.e. as unsigned int or time_t
diffing	Can compare two or more files
disassembly	File content can be seen in Assembly
executable-aware	Can natively parse/edit headers from executable files
macros	Support macros recording/replay
multi-file	Edit multiple files simultaneously
plugins	Users can write custom plugins to extend its functionality
projects	Can save projects containing multiple files
repl	REPL interface such as GDB
scripting	Scripting support
templates	Binary patterns/structures/templates
themes	Users can change editor colors
vim-like	Vim-like keybindings/features

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.