[4] TeachText was derived from the Edit application,[4] which was a simple text editor for the early pre-System 6 Apple Macintosh computers.

Since the first Macintosh models came with a full-featured word processor, MacWrite, software publishers commonly shipped documentation in its native format.

When Apple stopped bundling MacWrite, ownership was transferred to Claris, so developers could not distribute it on their programs' installation floppy disks.

In this respect, TeachText was the "default editor"[6] of the Mac system, playing a role similar to Notepad under Microsoft Windows.

TextEdit had originally been written to support very small runs of editable text, like those found in Save as... dialogs and similar roles.