Text Count

A live count of the characters, words, and lines in the current Nova
document, and of the current selection.

Sidebar

Add Text Count to the sidebar dock (drag it in from the dock chooser). It
updates as you type and as you move the selection:

▾ Document
    2,821 Characters
    391 Words
    61 Lines
▾ Selection
    14 Characters
    2 Words
    1 Line

Each row shows the count (emphasized) followed by its label — Characters,
Words, or Lines — in dimmed text.

The Selection group is always shown; its counts read zero when nothing is
selected and fill in when you select text. Only the individual values that change
are refreshed, so the panel stays still as you type.

Command

Document Statistics shows the same figures in a quick popup. Its default
shortcut is ⌃⇧3 (Control-Shift-3 — i.e. Control-#). You can change it under
Nova ▸ Settings ▸ Key Bindings.

How things are counted

• Characters — Unicode characters, including line breaks. Emoji and other
  characters outside the Basic Multilingual Plane count as one.
• Lines — the number of lines, matching the editor's line numbering (a
  trailing newline counts as a final line).
• Words — the runtime's Unicode word segmentation.

A note on word counts: different apps segment words slightly differently, so the
word total can vary by a small amount between Text Count, BBEdit, and other
editors on the same text. Character and line counts are exact.

Changelog

1.0

Initial release. A live sidebar showing the character, word, and line count of
the current document and the current selection, plus a "Document Statistics"
command. Character and line counts are exact; word counts use the runtime's
Unicode word segmentation and can differ slightly from other editors.

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2026 PureBlend Corporation

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.