Using TextEdit as a text editor

One utility Mac OS X seems to be lacking is a simple text editor such as Notepad for Windows. It comes with TextEdit but the problem is that this uses rich text format (RTF) which is very annoying when editing system files or code.

Thankfully, you can reconfigure it to use plain text.

Simply go to TextEdit on the menu bar and hit Preferences. The top option should allow you to toggle between Plain Text and Rich Text.