This is one area where VS Code really wins, because their package manager is baked right in.
The first thing I do on any new Sublime install is add the Package Control extension. Here’s what that looks like in my settings file. No horizontal scrolling for me, even with source code.
trim_trailing_white_space_on_save - This removes all trailing white space when you save.It’s distracting, particularly while screensharing, and especially for someone with ADHD. show_definitions - This shows a popup of possible definitions whenever you hover over a word.Again, I have an extension I prefer to use for this. show_git_status - This shows git repository information next to files in sidebar and in the status bar.mini_diff - I turn off native Git diffing in the sidebar, because I have a Git extension I prefer to use instead.I prefer to get asked if I want to save, and discard unsaved changes next time the app opens. hot_exit - This reopens unsaved changes when Sublime opens back up.highlight_line - Adds a highlight color to the line the cursor is currently on.find_selected_text - When a word is highlighted, find every other instance of it in the document.Sublime’s settings are pretty good out-of-the-box, but like most pieces of software, I like to make a few changes to better fit my workflow. I used Sublime 3 for pretty much my entire career, and just recently upgraded to Sublime 4. That seems like a good thing, and for many people, it is! But me? I just want my text editor to get out of the way and let me write code. It has a lot more bells-and-whistles baked right in. And Sublime Text 4 has been optimized for the new macOS chips, making it even faster.īeyond speed, I generally want a text editor that stays out of my way, and VS Code is very much the opposite of that. Like all apps written in electron, VS Code just cannot compete with the performance of an app written in an OS’s native language like Sublime Text. I want to double click on a file, or open the app to start a new project, and just have it ready to go.Īnd Sublime Text is the undisputed champ there. I don’t want to have wait around for files to open. However, my number one want in a text editor for day-to-day use is speed. This is invaluable when putting together presentations with code samples, so I use VS Code myself when building conference talks. It even does something Sublime can’t: preserve formatting when copy/pasting code.
It is hands-down the best free text editor available today. I recommend VS Code to all of my students. Let’s dig in! First: why Sublime over VS Code? This lets you set a default font size to anything you want, and assigns the key binding Ctrl 0 to the reset function.My Sublime Text setup for front end web developmentĮven though VS Code is the new hotness, I still use Sublime Text for all of my web development and text editing needs. The following solution was found on the Sublime Text forum and works great. And what is worse, it actually removes the font_size setting from your user settings file.
If you have defined a custom font size to something else, Reset doesn’t revert to your custom font size, but to the default 10 pt. Sublime Texts default font size is 10 pt. There is a menu item Reset under Preferences->Font, but that doesn’t work quite like you would expect. By default Ctrl 0 doesn’t bind to anything. It is also quite common that you can use Ctrl 0 to reset the zoom back to default, but that doesn’t work in Sublime Text. This is a very useful feature if you use Sublime Text in a presentation. You might know that you can use Ctrl + and Ctrl - (or Cmd + and Cmd - if on OSX) to temporarily increase or decrease the font size, similar to the way you can zoom in and out in a web browser. Reset font size (that doesn’t remove your custom font size setting) It will not be just about listing my favourite packages (although that may come in a later post), but how you can make small, but useful improvements in other ways. In this and later posts I am going to share some of my favourite ways to improve the functionality of Sublime Text 2. You can extend the functionality of Sublime Text 2 in many ways just by adding packages. It comes with built-in support of a great number of programming languages and file formats, and an even bigger number of community supplied plugins and extensions. It has in a very short time become my favourite programming tool. Sublime Text 2 is an extremely powerful text editor that is particularly well suited for programming and editing markup.