SmoothCSV alternative
Intact CSV Editor vs SmoothCSV
A cross-platform CSV editor with a quick release pace — 61 releases between September 2024 and August 2026. Intact CSV Editor does 26 things we did not find on SmoothCSV's website or in its release notes — Parquet files, column rules and SPSS files among them — and 99 of the 106 features SmoothCSV lists.
26
things Intact CSV Editor does that we did not find on SmoothCSV's website or in its release notes, of the 57 we compared.
99 / 106
of the features SmoothCSV lists are in Intact CSV Editor too, and 4 more in part.
0
of the features SmoothCSV lists Intact CSV Editor does not have yet.
Where Intact CSV Editor is ahead
26 things we did not find on SmoothCSV's website or in its release notes.
We read the features page and all 61 GitHub release notes (v0.1.0-alpha.1 to v3.24.0) on 10 September 2026, and looked for each of them there.
Keeping data intact
- Keeps the byte-order mark
- Keeps comment lines
- Mainframe EBCDIC code pages
- Refuses a character the encoding cannot hold
Opening files
- Fixed-width files, with layouts you can keep
- Log files read into columns by a pattern
- OpenDocument spreadsheets
- Parquet, Avro, ORC and Arrow, read and written
- SQLite databases
- SPSS, Stata, SAS, R and MATLAB files
- Open a file from a link
- vCards and your Mac's Contacts
Editing and cleaning
- The column's own values offered as you type
- Clusters of similar values, merged on request
- JSON inside a cell, edited as a tree
- Rewrite dates and number formats
- Reshape: wide to long, a cell split into rows
- Stack several files into one
Analysis
- Rules for each column, checked on every row
Automation
- AppleScript and Shortcuts
- JavaScript macros
- Send the table through any program
Export
- Export to more than 30 formats
- Split a file into several
Safety
- Unsaved work recovered after a crash
- Settings kept in a small file beside the data
Side by side
Every feature we compared.
| Feature |  Intact CSV Editor | SmoothCSV |
|---|---|---|
| Keeping data intact | ||
| Saves a file back byte for byte | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Detects the text encoding | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Mainframe EBCDIC code pages | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Keeps the byte-order mark | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Keeps comment lines | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Refuses a character the encoding cannot hold | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Quoting per column and per cell | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Opening files | ||
| Separator, quotes and line endings detected and shown | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Excel workbooks, opened and saved as workbooks | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| OpenDocument spreadsheets | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| JSON, JSON Lines, YAML and XML as tables | Intact CSV Editor | In part |
| Parquet, Avro, ORC and Arrow, read and written | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| SPSS, Stata, SAS, R and MATLAB files | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| SQLite databases | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Tables from web pages | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| vCards and your Mac's Contacts | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Log files read into columns by a pattern | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Open a file from a link | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Fixed-width files, with layouts you can keep | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Millions of rows | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Rules for the files in a folder | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Editing and cleaning | ||
| The column's own values offered as you type | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Fill handle that continues a series | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| JSON inside a cell, edited as a tree | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Find and replace with regular expressions and a preview | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| A filter on every column heading, with counts | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Sort by several columns, then back to the file's order | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Duplicates judged on the columns you choose | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Rewrite dates and number formats | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Reshape: wide to long, a cell split into rows | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Stack several files into one | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Clusters of similar values, merged on request | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Analysis | ||
| SQL across every open file | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Summaries and pivot tables with subtotals | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Statistics for every column | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Look values up in another table | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Compare two files, value by value | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Rules for each column, checked on every row | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Automation | ||
| JavaScript macros | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Send the table through any program | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| AppleScript and Shortcuts | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| A command-line tool and links into the app | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| A command palette | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Shortcuts you can change, sequences too | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Export | ||
| Export to more than 30 formats | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| PDF export, PDF/A too | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Word and rich text | Intact CSV Editor | In part |
| Copy as Markdown, JSON, SQL, HTML and more | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| HTML tables that sort themselves | Intact CSV Editor | In part |
| Saved export presets | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Split a file into several | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Safety | ||
| A copy kept before every save | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Unsaved work recovered after a crash | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Knows when another program changes the file | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Lock a file against changes | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Settings kept in a small file beside the data | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| On the Mac | ||
| Eight languages | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
DocumentedDocumentedIn partIn part—Not in their documentationNot in their documentation·Not comparedNot compared
Choose Intact CSV Editor if…
- Your files must come back exactly as they came — byte for byte, in their own separator, quoting, encoding and line endings.
- You open more than CSV: Excel, JSON, Parquet, SPSS, Stata, SAS, EBCDIC and more — and export to 33 formats.
- You want SQL across files, column rules, file comparison and a backup before every save, in one app.
- You work on a Mac and want an app made for it, in eight languages, from a company in Zürich you can call.
SChoose SmoothCSV if…
- Windows, Linux and a portable build as well as the Mac.
- Split the editor into groups side by side.
- An editor toolbar you can place where you like.
| Intact CSV Editor | SmoothCSV | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Native Mac editor for CSV and 30+ data formats | Cross-platform CSV editor |
| Runs on | Mac (macOS 14 or later) | Windows, Mac and Linux |
| Only here | 26 of the 57 features we compared | 0 of the 106 features it lists |
In fairness
Where SmoothCSV goes further
Every feature SmoothCSV documents is in Intact CSV Editor. In 4 of them, SmoothCSV does more:
- Cell value panel
- Licensing, for every way the app is sold
- Manual quote mode
- Editor toolbar with configurable position
Sources
https://smoothcsv.com — read 10 September 2026: the features page and all 61 GitHub release notes (v0.1.0-alpha.1 to v3.24.0). Product names belong to their owners. Found something out of date? Tell us.
Everything SmoothCSV documents — 106 features, and whether Intact CSV Editor does it
| SmoothCSV documents | In Intact CSV Editor |
|---|---|
| Spreadsheet-style grid, smooth on large files | Yes |
| Insert, delete, move, duplicate rows and columns | Yes |
| Multi-cell selection and editing | Yes |
| Selection aggregation in the status bar | Yes |
| Transpose rows and columns | Yes |
| Freeze header rows and columns | Yes |
| Go to row / column (⌃G) | Yes |
| Document navigation shortcuts | Yes |
| Page Up / Page Down | Yes |
| Auto-fit column width | Yes |
| Zoom | Yes |
| Word wrap, per window | Yes |
| Hide rows and columns | Yes |
| Read-only mode | Yes |
| Record view | Yes |
| Cell value panel | Partly |
| Auto-fill by dragging, with pattern recognition | Yes |
| Drag a selection's border to move or copy it | Yes |
| Drag rows and columns to reorder them | Yes |
| Drag a selection out of the window | Yes |
| Export the selection to a file | Yes |
| French, Italian and Spanish | Yes |
| Licensing, for every way the app is sold | Partly |
| More search engines for Search the Web for This | Yes |
| Move rows with the keyboard | Yes |
| Swap cells with a neighbour | Yes |
| Body-first select-all | Yes |
| Several blocks, and taking one away | Yes |
| Invert the selection | Yes |
| Escape cancels the selection | Yes |
| Insert copied rows and columns | Yes |
| Paste transposed | Yes |
| Join and split cells | Yes |
| Blank down | Yes |
| Fill | Yes |
| Text transformations | Yes |
| Remove duplicate rows | Yes |
| Show control characters | Yes |
| Row and column numbering options | Yes |
| Multi-row headers | Yes |
| Emacs key bindings | Yes |
| Find and replace, with regular expressions | Yes |
| Row filter | Yes |
| Filter actions | Yes |
| Filter by the selected values | Yes |
| Column menu with quick filter | Yes |
| Visual condition builder | Yes |
| Saved and recent filters | Yes |
| Smart sort | Yes |
| Sort by several columns | Yes |
| Sort only the selected rows | Yes |
| Remove sorting | Yes |
| SQL console | Yes |
| SQL sidebar as a tree, with a context menu | Yes |
| Query several open files in one statement, and save views | Yes |
| Date and time types in SQL | Yes |
| Save and reopen SQL queries | Yes |
| Paginated SQL results | Yes |
| Keyboard navigation and copy in the result grid | Yes |
| Compare two files | Yes |
| Aggregate row pinned in the grid | Yes |
| Column statistics | Yes |
| Delimiter, quote, encoding, line endings per file | Yes |
| Automatic detection | Yes |
| Format presets | Yes |
| Apply a preset automatically by file path | Yes |
| Per-column and per-row-type quote rules | Yes |
| Manual quote mode | Partly |
| Quote indicators | Yes |
| Reload from disk | Yes |
| Notice when the file changes on disk | Yes |
| Automatic backup before saving | Yes |
| Crash recovery | Yes |
| Defaults for new documents | Yes |
| Copy selection as another format | Yes |
| Copy as raw values | Yes |
| Copy and paste using the file's own format | Yes |
| Copy the file path | Yes |
| Reveal in Finder | Yes |
| Open Recent | Yes |
| Excel import and export | Yes |
| Import JSON, XML, property list, SQLite, Markdown | Yes |
Read Microsoft Access databases (.mdb, .accdb) | Not applicable |
| PDF export | Yes |
| Clickable URLs in cells | Yes |
| Command-line tool | Yes |
| URL scheme | Yes |
| Settings window | Yes |
| Search within Settings, and a modified/reset indicator | Yes |
| Command palette (⇧⌘P), with history | Yes |
| Customisable keyboard shortcuts | Yes |
| Light and dark | Yes |
| Localisation | Yes |
| Document tabs | Yes |
| Close a tab by middle-clicking | Yes |
| Split the editor into groups | Not applicable |
| Editor toolbar with configurable position | Partly |
| Remember window size and position | Yes |
| Start page | Yes |
| Title bar style | Yes |
| Stay open after the last window closes | Yes |
| Automatic update checks | Yes |
| Windows, Linux, portable build, AUR package, code signing | Not applicable |
| Non-QWERTY keyboard layouts | Yes |
| Fast on very large files | Yes |
| Grid size in the status bar, visible vs total | Yes |
Questions
About this comparison
Is Intact CSV Editor a good alternative to SmoothCSV?
For most people who work on a Mac, yes. It does 99 of the 106 features SmoothCSV lists, 4 more in part, and 26 things we did not find on SmoothCSV's website or in its release notes — Parquet files, column rules and SPSS files among them. Where SmoothCSV is ahead is listed on this page too.
Does Intact CSV Editor have more features than SmoothCSV?
Of the 57 features of Intact CSV Editor we looked for on SmoothCSV's website or in its release notes, we found 31, some of them only in part; the other 26 we did not find. The other way round, Intact CSV Editor lacks 0 of the 106 features SmoothCSV lists.
How was this comparison made?
We read the features page and all 61 GitHub release notes (v0.1.0-alpha.1 to v3.24.0) on 10 September 2026. Every feature SmoothCSV lists was checked against Intact CSV Editor, and every one of Intact CSV Editor's was looked for in SmoothCSV's pages. A dash means we found nothing like it there; SmoothCSV may do more than it documents. If something has changed, write to info@marketvision.ch and we will correct it.
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