In a few short years, Sublime Text has evolved as the development tool of choice for serious and casual programmers alike, alongside Vim and Emacs. It is free, lightweight, cross-platform compatible and boasts seemingly endless customization options.



One reason for Sublime Text's popularity is its large library of plugins. It can easily work with hundreds of different plugins via Python. Installation is as easy as placing the plugin in the packages directory.

Installing a Sublime Text plugin is by no means difficult, but it certainly is time-consuming. Package Control saves you the hard work by putting a Python pip-like package installer right inside Sublime. Use it to quickly find and install the right plugin automatically, without ever leaving Sublime.

No serious programmer can hope to work without Git. This plugin places the power of Git right inside Sublime Text. Instead of switching to the terminal, use this plugin for essential Git commands, from creating new branches to pushing files, right from the text editor.

Every programmer knows the pain of manually matching brackets on every line of code. The Bracket Highlighter plugin does the heavy lifting of matching brackets for you. Install it via Package Control, and watch as it automatically highlights brackets for you.

Want to see if a piece of code exists on a Github repository? GitHubinator will let you highlight any line of code and automatically search for it on the remote Github repo, without opening any new browser windows.

Sublime's sidebar options are limited to 'Hide' and 'Reveal'. Focus File gives you another option: 'Focus'. Install it if you like to open a new file and focus instantly on its tree structure.

This plugin makes it easy to work with ctags generated by Exuberant Ctags. It will automatically search for a .tags file inside your project directory and create a dynamic tag list or index file from scratch.

Sublime Text is extremely flexible right out of the box, but it doesn't do a great job with .hamlc files. Install CoffeeScriptHaml to add syntax highlighting capabilities for .hamlc files to Sublime.

DashDoc integrates Dash directly into Sublime. Perfect for developers who like to work with lots of APIs.

The hardest part working with Git is figuring out whether a specific line has been modified. This GitGutter places an icon next to every line in a file, indicating whether it has been modified, inserted or deleted.

This popular plugin provides enhancements to Files and Folders Sidebar, adding useful options for the context menu, such as: duplicate, move file, copy file name/path, and many others. Also, you can set up key shortcuts for each of these commands. It’s a great plugin to make your coding life easier and help you work faster.

11. Custom Themes

While not exactly a 'plugin', custom themes can radically improve your productivity by making code easier to read. Sublime ships with a huge range of themes right out of the box, but if you need more options, you'll find plenty of custom themes online. Some of our favorites are the Brogrammer, Tech49 and Glacier.

There are countless other plugins for Sublime Text, ranging from the simple to the complex. For beginners, these 10 plugins will be more than enough to get started. Once you incorporate them into your workflow, you will see a massive boost in your productivity. And if you want more - make sure to read Even More Sublime Text Plugins for Beginners.

Getting started with development? Let us help you out with great lists of online resources for iOS and Ruby on Rails podcasts. Take your pick and enjoy!