Intended for software developers, it features syntax highlighting, code folding, customizable layouts, multiple cursors and selections, regular expression support, and extensibility via plugins.

[citation needed] Kate has won the advanced text editor comparison in Linux Voice magazine.

[15] Kate's main text editor widget is called KatePart, which is reusable under the terms of the LGPL version 2 license.

[24][25] Being a KDE application, Kate transparently opens and saves files over all protocols supported by KIO libraries.

Other features are a clipboard history with up to ten items, the ability to jump to a line number,[26] and source control integration using Git[27][28] Media related to Kate (text editor) at Wikimedia Commons