5 more Sublime Text tweaks & tips

I'm working hard on my Sublime Text Book and have received fantastic response for everything so far - very motivating. The last post was so well received that I've decided to post a few more of my favourite tips.

1. Save on focus lost

Chronic ⌘+S’er? This tip is particularly helpful when working with CSS/LESS/SASS and switching between your editor and browser. Instead of saving on every tiny little change, tell Sublime to automatically save your files when you tab away from the editor.

I find this is super handy when working with extensions like Live Reload or compiled languages like coffeescript that watch for file saves. Put this in your settings file at Preferences → Settings - User

" save_on_focus_lost " : true

If you work with other watch scripts that break and restart a process upon save (like supervisor or forever), this might not be ideal for you. No problem, only enable it for the languages you want - simply place the above setting in /Packages/User/ [syntax] .sublime-settings. For example, I put the above in CSS.sublime-settings and LESS.sublime-settings

2. Paste and Indent

One of the best tricks I’ve ever learned in Sublime Text is paste and indent. If you have ever pulled a piece of code off the Internet and pasted it into your application, you’ll no doubt feel the pain of having it paste in all weird and have to go in and fix it.

Easy fix to this, instead of pressing the normal cmd + v to paste, simply switch to using cmd + shift + v to paste. This will automatically indent your code block.

Like that one? I loved it so I remapped my key combos to paste and indent by default on cmd + v

Paste this little snippet into your key bindings file located at Preferences → Key Bindings - User

{ " keys " : [ " super+v " ], " command " : " paste_and_indent " }, { " keys " : [ " super+shift+v " ], " command " : " paste " }

3. Reindent Keyboard shortcut

Now, if for some reason you end up with either a block of code or an entire file filled with hard to ready, messy, poorly indented code, reindent is your best friend.

To automatically re-indent your code, simply select the code you want to indent and then from the menu Edit → Line → Reindent

Sublime doesn’t ship a keyboard shortcut for this. No problem, let’s make our own. Pop this little snippet into the Preferences → Key Bindings - User file.

{ " keys " : [ " super+shift+r " ], " command " : " reindent " }

4. Highlight Modified Tab

When making a change in sublime text, by default it changes the × to a circle of the same colour.

" highlight_modified_tabs " : true

Make it a little more obvious when you haven’t saved changes to a document by turning on the following:The exact styling of your modified tabs will vary depending on your theme. It looks fantastic with my cobalt2 theme for Sublime Text

I’m an instructor at HackerYou where we use Sublime Text extensively. This is a small, yet common, problem that we run into. Making it visually obvious cuts down on mistakes like this.

5. Proper Fullscreen for Mac Users

This one is only for those running Sublime Text on Mac OSX 10.7 or 10.8 with multiple monitors. You have probably realized that apple has really dropped the ball when using fullscreen, rendering the rest of multiple monitors into nothing but a linen backdrop.

If you like to code fullscreen yet still use your other monitors, go ahead and add the following to your preferences file:

" use_simple_full_screen " : true

You’ll have to restart Sublime Text for this one.

More?

I’ve got plenty more tips as well as in-depth guides on the rest of Sublime Text in my book. If you have a must-use tip or commends on any of the above, please feel free to leave a comment!