Sunsetting Atom

January 30, 2023 Update: Update to the previous version of Atom before February 2

On December 7, 2022, GitHub detected unauthorized access to a set of repositories used in the planning and development of Atom. After a thorough investigation, we have concluded there was no risk to GitHub.com services as a result of this unauthorized access.

A set of encrypted code signing certificates were exfiltrated; however, the certificates were password-protected and we have no evidence of malicious use. As a preventative measure, we will revoke the exposed certificates used for the Atom application. Revoking these certificates will invalidate some versions of Atom.

These versions of Atom will stop working on February 2. To keep using Atom, users will need to download a previous Atom version.

• 1.63.1
• 1.63.0

Read more on our blog, including next steps for impacted Desktop users.

November 16, 2022 Update: We’ve since updated our blog post to include additional information about what you can expect after the sunset of Atom on December 15, 2022. See below for specifics.

When we introduced Atom in 2011, we set out to give developers a text editor that was deeply customizable but also easy to use—one that made it possible for more people to build software. While that goal of growing the software creator community remains, we’ve decided to retire Atom in order to further our commitment to bringing fast and reliable software development to the cloud via Microsoft Visual Studio Code and GitHub Codespaces.

On June 8, 2022, we announced that we will sunset Atom and archive all projects under the organization on December 15, 2022.

Why are we doing this?

Atom has not had significant feature development for the past several years, though we’ve conducted maintenance and security updates during this period to ensure we’re being good stewards of the project and product. As new cloud-based tools have emerged and evolved over the years, Atom community involvement has declined significantly. As a result, we’ve decided to sunset Atom so we can focus on enhancing the developer experience in the cloud with GitHub Codespaces.

This is a tough goodbye. It’s worth reflecting that Atom has served as the foundation for the Electron framework, which paved the way for the creation of thousands of apps, including Microsoft Visual Studio Code, Slack, and our very own GitHub Desktop. However, reliability, security, and performance are core to GitHub, and in order to best serve the developer community, we are archiving Atom to prioritize technologies that enable the future of software development.

What happens next?

We recognize that Atom is still used by the community and want to acknowledge that migrating to an alternative solution takes time and energy. We are committed to helping users and contributors plan for their migration.

• On June 8, 2022, we announced the sunset date six months out
• Through December 15, we’ll continue to inform Atom users of the sunset
• On December 15, 2022, we will archive the atom/atom repository and all other repositories remaining in the Atom organization

If I’m using Atom, what changes can I expect after the sunset?

• Pre-built Atom binaries can continue to downloaded from the atom repository releases
• Atom package management will stop working
• No more security updates
• Teletype will no longer work
• Deprecated redirects that supported downloading Electron symbols and headers will no longer work

Thank you

GitHub and our community have benefited tremendously from those who have filed issues, created extensions, fixed bugs, and built new features on Atom. Atom played an integral part in many developers’ journeys, and we look forward to building and shaping the next chapter of software development together.