Finding a good Gherkin editor is difficult. Some editors like Visual Studio Code and similar IDEs work great for engineers but aren’t suitable for product owners and non-programmer Amigos who want to contribute. Other editors like Notepad++ and Atom are lighter in weight but still require extensions and a little expertise. Fancy BDD tools like CucumberStudio and Cucumber for Jira provide Gherkin editors together with a bunch of other nifty features, but they require paid licenses.

For years, I’ve wanted a lightweight Gherkin editor that’s easy to use and accessible to all. Now, one finally exists: the Online Gherkin Editor by SpecFlow!

SpecFlow is the most popular BDD test automation framework for .NET. It’s also my favorite BDD framework. Over the past few years, I’ve built two large-scale test automation solutions with SpecFlow.

The Online Gherkin Editor by SpecFlow is just an editor on a web page. When you first load the page, the editor has example scenarios for you to reference. You can type your own Gherkin into the text area, and the editor highlights it for you. The editor provides line numbers and visual scrolling, too. My language is English, but if you happen to speak German, French, Spanish, or Dutch, then you can change the language setting via a dropdown. Once you’re done writing your Gherkin, you can clear it, copy it to the clipboard, or download it as a feature file using icons in the top-right corner. Be warned, though, that this editor won’t save your Gherkin in the cloud.

If you want to give this new editor a try, here’s the link: https://specflow.org/gherkin-editor/

You can also read SpecFlow’s official announcement here: https://specflow.org/blog/introducing-the-specflow-online-gherkin-editor/

Thanks, SpecFlow! Happy “Gherk-ing”!