BlueGriffon is a free, open-source visual HTML and EPUB editor for macOS that lets you build and edit web pages and digital books directly in a WYSIWYG interface powered by Firefox's Gecko rendering engine.
What is BlueGriffon?
BlueGriffon is a desktop authoring tool that treats your browser's own rendering engine as the editing canvas — meaning what you see while editing is, in theory, exactly what Firefox renders. Born from the ashes of Nvu and Kompozer, it targets designers and authors who want to craft standards-compliant HTML5 and CSS3 without writing every tag by hand, and publishers who need a dedicated EPUB 2/3 editor that doesn't require a command-line toolchain.
Under the hood, BlueGriffon speaks the same layout language as Gecko, so CSS Grid, Flexbox, and modern HTML5 semantics render faithfully while you edit — something older WYSIWYG tools like Dreamweaver's Design view famously mangled. That fidelity is its sharpest edge.
What does BlueGriffon do best?
BlueGriffon is at its strongest as a low-friction EPUB editor for authors who don't want to unzip and manually poke at XML. You can open an EPUB file directly, edit chapter text and styling, manage the spine and metadata, and re-export a valid package — a workflow that otherwise involves Sigil, a terminal, or a commercial inDesign plugin.
For web work, the split-pane Source/WYSIWYG mode is genuinely useful for writers maintaining personal sites or documentation portals. I've found it handy when handing off HTML templates to non-technical contributors who freeze up at a code editor: the visual layer stays honest to the source, so round-trips don't introduce mystery markup.
- EPUB 2 and EPUB 3 authoring — open, edit, validate, and re-export without unzipping
- Gecko-powered WYSIWYG — the editing surface matches real Firefox rendering
- HTML5 and CSS3 support — semantic markup, custom properties, and modern layout primitives work
- Source/design split view — toggle or tile both panes simultaneously
- No subscription — the core build is free; certain advanced add-ons are paid
How much does BlueGriffon cost?
The core application is free to download. A set of optional commercial add-ons — including a more capable CSS editor and MathML support — are sold separately at modest prices on the official site. For most HTML and EPUB editing tasks, the free tier is entirely sufficient; I've never felt compelled to unlock the paid extensions for day-to-day use.
Who should use BlueGriffon?
BlueGriffon is best suited to authors, small publishers, and educators who need an approachable WYSIWYG path to standards-compliant HTML or EPUB — not power developers building JavaScript-heavy applications. If you're comfortable in VS Code or Nova and have a bundler workflow, BlueGriffon adds little. But if you're maintaining a documentation site, producing EPUB ebooks from scratch, or teaching HTML5 to students who need immediate visual feedback, it fills a genuinely underserved niche.
Academic and technical writers who produce EPUB editions of monographs or course readers will find it particularly relevant — it avoids the terminal entirely while still producing valid, exportable packages that pass EPUB validators.
What are the best BlueGriffon alternatives?
For EPUB specifically, Sigil is the most direct competitor and is arguably more actively maintained today; it has a stronger validation workflow and a larger plugin ecosystem, though its visual editing is less polished. Adobe InDesign exports EPUB but is priced for professionals and is overkill if you aren't already in that ecosystem. For pure HTML editing, Nova and VS Code far outclass BlueGriffon on developer features but offer no WYSIWYG layer at all. The old-guard Dreamweaver still exists, but its Design view has been quietly abandoned by its own team. BlueGriffon occupies the middle ground none of these tools want to own.
What are BlueGriffon's known limitations?
Honesty matters here. BlueGriffon's development cadence has slowed noticeably in recent years, and the macOS build can feel rough around the edges — occasional UI glitches, slow startup on Apple Silicon via Rosetta 2, and a preference system that predates modern macOS conventions. Complex CSS layouts sometimes confuse the WYSIWYG layer into rendering artifacts that don't exist in a real browser. It is not a tool I'd reach for on a deadline-driven commercial project. Treat it as a reliable utility for lighter authoring tasks rather than a professional production environment.
