Sublime Text Settings I Use

It’s always interesting to find out how people set up their coding environment. To be honest I don’t think I’ll ever get the perfect setup but what I currently have does a pretty good job.

Tweaking your Sublime Text settings is relatively easy but can be a little daunting if you are fan of a GUI. Within Sublime all settings are handled by a simple JSON file. They can be found either under the Sublime Text menu (Sublime Text 2 -> Preferences -> Settings – User) or by the shortcut (Command + .).

User Settings

So these are my current settings. All of them are pretty self-explanatory.


{
    "auto_complete_commit_on_tab": true,
    "color_scheme": "Packages/Color Scheme - Default/Monokai Soda.tmTheme",
    "draw_minimap_border": true,
    "draw_white_space": "all",
    "font_face": "monaco",
    "font_size": 14,
    "highlight_line": true,
    "line_padding_bottom": 1,
    "line_padding_top": 1,
    "shift_tab_unindent": true,
    "tab_size": 4,
    "theme": "Soda Dark.sublime-theme",
    "translate_tabs_to_spaces": true,
    "trim_trailing_white_space_on_save": true,
    "word_wrap": true,
    "save_on_focus_lost": true,
    "bold_folder_labels": true,
    "highlight_modified_tabs": true,
    "scroll_past_end": true,
    "wrap_width": 80
}

Theme

I roll with the dark version of the Soda theme with the default Monokai colour scheme.

Packages

Package Control — This package is the package to help install all other packages. Once installed, just open the command palette (Command + Shift + p). Type ‘Package Control’ and choose your desired action.

SideBarEnhancements — Provides enhancements to files and folders. So handy!

GitGutter — This plugin shows an icon in the gutter area indicating whether a line has been inserted, modified or deleted.

SublimeLinter — Inline lint highlighting. Priceless.

Sublime Grunt — Control your Grunt tasks from inside Sublime.

SCSS — SCSS highlighting.

Some handy short-cuts

A small selection of the my most used commands.

Option + Command + . — Close tag.

Command + p — Show the “go to anything” palette.

Command + Shift + p — Show the command palette.

Ctrl + g — Show the “go to line” palette.

Command + k, Command + b — Toggle the sidebar.

Ctrl + Shift + Command + f — Launch distraction-free writing.

Function + f6 — Spell check.

Obviously the above suits my workflow, so take the settings and packages with a grain of salt. But if you have any specific settings or packages that are essential to the way you work, please comment below. You might save me or someone else some time!

7 thoughts on “Sublime Text Settings I Use”

I love workflow posts.

Some thoughts to add:


// Binary File Patterns
// I add these to filter them out of searches
{
  "binary_file_patterns":
  [
    "*.jpg",
    "*.jpeg",
    "*.png",
    "*.gif",
    "*.ttf",
    "*.tga",
    "*.dds",
    "*.ico",
    "*.eot",
    "*.pdf",
    "*.swf",
    "*.jar",
    "*.zip",
    "*.dmp",
    "*/min/*.js",
    "*/min/*.css",
    "*/min/*.map"
   // I have others too, specific to the projects I work with (eg EAR folders)
  ],
  "default_line_ending": "unix", // good for consistency
  "detect_indentation": false, // mainly to then control indentation myself
  "detect_slow_plugins": false,
  "drag_text": false, // don't care to have this feature on
  "ensure_newline_at_eof_on_save": true, // good practice: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/729692/why-should-files-end-with-a-newline
  "fallback_encoding": "UTF-8",
  "file_exclude_patterns": // these I use to block out files I don't even want to see (also cleans up Go To menu)
  [
    "*.pyc",
    "*.pyo",
    "*.exe",
    "*.dll",
    "*.obj",
    "*.o",
    "*.a",
    "*.lib",
    "*.so",
    "*.dylib",
    "*.ncb",
    "*.sdf",
    "*.suo",
    "*.pdb",
    "*.idb",
    ".DS_Store",
    "*.class",
    "*.psd",
    "*.db",
    "cache.properties",
    "*.map",
    "*.orig"
  ],
  "folder_exclude_patterns":
  [
    ".svn",
    ".git",
    ".hg",
    "CVS",
    "node_modules"
  ],
  "font":
  [
    "subpixel_antialias" // font smoothing goodness
  ],
  "rulers": // helpful to enforce a readable column width
  [
    78
  ],
  "spell_check": true,
  "tab_size": 2, // not going to fight this one, just a preference
  "theme": "Soda Light 3.sublime-theme",
  "line_padding_bottom": 1,
  "line_padding_top": 1
}

Also great site for reference of available settings:
http://docs.sublimetext.info/en/latest/reference/settings.html

Carlos

August 31, 2013 at 1:53 pm

Ohhhh man these are great! Favorite one is the "bold_folder_labels": true! No idea that was even an idea of customization. Thanks!
Mathew Porter

September 2, 2013 at 3:45 am

Great to see someone elses work process and setup.
Robert Cordes

September 10, 2013 at 10:22 am

Great post! GitGutter and SublimeLinter are awesome. But how did you make them work together? When I change something, the GitGutter indicators hide the ones from SublimeLinter. Do you have the same problem?
- admin
  
  September 10, 2013 at 12:05 pm
  
  Hey Robert,
  Unfortunately I don’t sorry, it does the opposite for me — http://jakeyb.com/iQII. If you can’t seem to figure it out maybe submit an issue to the GitHub repo..
  
  Good luck!

I’m using this:


{
	"bold_folder_labels": true,
	"close_windows_when_empty": false,
	"detect_slow_plugins": false,
	"fade_fold_buttons": false,
	"file_selected_text": true,
	"font_face": "Monaco",
	"font_size": 13.0,
	"highlight_line": true,
	"ignored_packages":
	[
		"LaTeX",
		"D",
		"Vintage",
		"AppleScript",
		"TCL",
		"ActionScript"
	],
	"open_files_in_new_window": false,
	"soda_classic_tabs": false,
	"soda_folder_icons": true,
	"tab_size": 2,
	"theme": "Soda Dark.sublime-theme",
	"translate_tabs_to_spaces": true,
	"word_wrap": true,
	"line_padding_bottom": 1,
	"line_padding_top": 1,
	"draw_white_space": "all",
	"trim_trailing_white_space_on_save": true,
	"wrap_width": 95
}

Michelle

October 16, 2013 at 2:49 am

Thanks to Jake and to everyone else who posted their settings! I just started using Sublime Text today (version 3) after using Dreamweaver for so many years and I really like it a lot! Fast and stable and so many customizations! Thanks again everyone!!!

Comments are closed.