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How to Create a New Text File on Mac

With Supercharge

  1. Open Supercharge, and give it the access that it asks for in “Device Control and Data Access”.
  2. In Finder, open the folder for the file.
  3. Press OptionN. Finder makes an empty file, and selects its name.
  4. Type the name with the extension, like notes.txt, and press Return.

The shortcut is on by default. To change it, or to set a default extension, like txt or md, open the Supercharge settings, click “Tweaks”, and go to “Create new text file” in the Finder section. There you can also make the file open in an app after you name it.

You can also add “New Text File” to the right-click menu of Finder: in the same section, click “Configure…” next to “Context menu items”. The context menu items do not show in folders that sync with iCloud Drive, Dropbox, and similar services.

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Platform
macOS
Requires
macOS 26.4 or later
Released
September 2024
Privacy
No personal data collected
Updated
September 2026
Version
1.30.1
Size
16 MB
Gumroad rating
5.0/5 (284 ratings)

More about Supercharge

Without an app

Finder has “New Folder”, but no command for a new text file. Make the file in TextEdit:

  1. Open TextEdit, and choose “File › New”.
  2. Choose “Format › Make Plain Text”, so the file is plain text and not rich text.
  3. Choose “File › Save”, type the name, and choose the folder.

To make all new TextEdit documents plain text, open “TextEdit › Settings”, and below “Format”, choose “Plain text”.

Terminal: Go to the folder with cd, and run the touch command with the name of the file:

console
touch notes.txt

TextEdit is good for one file with text in it. For empty files in different folders, a shortcut in Finder is faster.

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