How do I change the default text editor?

Question

How can I change my default text editor from gedit to Emacs?

It is answered here: https://askubuntu.com/questions/977538/16-04-crontab-e-editor-settings-python-syntax-highlighting-in-vim - basically you want to export EDITOR=emacs - and perhaps add that to your .bashrc so it becomes your default. — SDsolar, Nov 17 '17 at 21:24

Benjamin · Accepted Answer · 2021-01-21T22:16:17.420

125

Here is what worked in my case:

Right click on a text file.
Choose "Properties" (not "Open With...")
Click on the "Open With" tab.
Choose your new text editor.
Mark chosen text editor using a button "Set as default".

This also works on 12.04 and 13.04.

@ Edit: based on comments it does work on all distros until 20.04

edited Jan 21 '21 at 22:16

answered Aug 28 '12 at 22:26

Benjamin

2,175

It does not work on 13.04. After Step 3, I see a lot of choices, but not the editor I would like to have .... of course, the idea would be to use 'Add' ... but this is grayed out and can't be selected. Argh – Marius Hofert May 23 '13 at 15:24
1

worked for me on 13.10 (replaced gedit with geany) – Alexander Malakhov Jan 29 '14 at 09:35
"Set as default" not showing on v 14 – atilkan Aug 31 '15 at 04:44
worked on 15.04 too ! – Kshitij Saraogi Oct 27 '15 at 09:48
Also works on 14.04 – DamBedEi Feb 12 '16 at 08:49
1

Works on 16.04 too! – Dženan Sep 05 '16 at 15:02
2

Also works on 17.04 – Jonas Dahlbæk Jul 25 '17 at 15:38
3

This works only on the per filetype basis.. – vstepaniuk Feb 16 '18 at 17:46
2

Also works on 18.04 – AlainD Aug 15 '19 at 09:31
18.04: ~/.config/mimeapps.list – Roman Grinyov Dec 03 '19 at 10:12
1

Should I do it for each type of file? There lots of 'types' of text file. – Moesio Dec 06 '19 at 14:18
1

works with 20.04 – vozman Aug 20 '20 at 09:29
1

Works on 20.04! – Arnold Roa Oct 07 '20 at 08:21
Doesn't work on 20.10....nah, kidding. Still works. – Jos Feb 18 '21 at 11:37
No surprise, it still works on 21.04 – cmr Sep 30 '21 at 08:21
This only answers "how do I change default editor for a specific file type", but doesn't answer how to "change the default text editor for everything". See @kn_pavan's solution below for a good answer. – Janos Jan 21 '22 at 11:56
@Janos worked fine for me. But you have to do it twice. Once with a text file with no dot in the filename, and once with a text file with a dot. – Joooeey Aug 18 '22 at 07:20
Works on Mint 20.1. I went through "Open with" and "Open with other Application..." instead of "Properties" though. – Joooeey Aug 18 '22 at 07:21

kn_pavan · Answer 2 · 2014-11-14T15:19:54.380

68

To change default text editor across the file types, try updating gnome-text-editor configuration.

sudo update-alternatives --config gnome-text-editor

In some cases:

sudo update-alternatives --config editor

edited Nov 14 '14 at 15:19

answered Oct 16 '14 at 11:33

kn_pavan

1,041

4

How can someone add another option? In my case I get the following: There is only one alternative in link group gnome-text-editor (providing /usr/bin/gnome-text-editor): /usr/bin/gedit - EDIT: found how to do it: sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gnome-text-editor gnome-text-editor /path/to/executablesublime 100 in my case /snap/bin/subl outoutted by which subl. – ttt Oct 21 '21 at 10:58
1

Thanks for this answer! Same here, I added subl first: sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gnome-text-editor gnome-text-editor $(which subl) 100. Then it was already selected as editor, as the above command then confirmed. – Janos Jan 21 '22 at 11:58
1

This is the one you need to ensure your editor choice persists even when running programs using wsl.exe <program> in WSL. (Specifically sudo update-alternatives --config editor) – daviewales Feb 19 '23 at 23:10

score 18 · Answer 3 · edited Aug 15 '17 at 17:28

18

I don't use a DE, but for my configurations the next command is the best:

/usr/bin/select-editor

it selects your default sensible-editor from all installed editors
must run with current user
you must have more than one editor in your system

Man pages select-editor

edited Aug 15 '17 at 17:28

Pilot6

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answered Aug 14 '17 at 17:04

oshliaer

333
5
13

2

+1 Works in 18.04. Does not affect other users. Does not need sudo. – Roux Apr 23 '20 at 05:11
After setting EDITOR to vi, VISUAL to vi, linking /etc/alternatives/editor or whatever to vi, I still got the pest named nano as the editor when running commands like virsh edit myvm. Applying a level of self-control I would never have guessed I could reach, I am not venting here. NOT VENTING AT ALL!!!! I renamed nano to nano.deleted, then I got several lines of error messages whenever I edited something. select-editor didn't change that. What did help was rm /usr/bin/sensible-editor followed by ln -s /usr/bin/vi /usr/bin/sensible-editor. Life is good. – berndbausch May 27 '21 at 06:39

score 15 · Answer 4 · edited Jan 27 '14 at 06:33

15

A more robust solution would be to replace the bindings in /usr/share/applications/defaults.list.

sed -i 's/gedit/emacs/' /usr/share/applications/defaults.list

edited Jan 27 '14 at 06:33

Pandu

143
5

answered Dec 10 '12 at 15:19

shrinidhi joshi

334

I don't know how, but by copying this command I accidentally cleared the whole file. I would much prefer doing this in a text editor using find-replace (as explained in this answer) for those who are not too familiar with sed. – metakermit Apr 05 '13 at 22:37
I did this (in a text editor with find-replace, which should have the same result), then logged out and back in but still C++ header files (*.h) are opened in gedit. – Stefan Monov Dec 14 '16 at 15:06

score 12 · Answer 5 · answered Nov 16 '10 at 03:18

12

Right click on a text file, point to "Open With" and it'll show other editors in a sub-menu. Click on "Other Application...". It'll show you a dialog with a list of applications, select Emacs and make sure the "Remember this application for "plain text document" file" option is checked. Click "Open".

answered Nov 16 '10 at 03:18

Mussnoon

5,046

1

I did try this, but I'm having a bit of a problem - whenever I double-click on a file in Nautilus, I get a dialog box that says: "Do you want to run "tasks.css", or display its contents? "tasks.css" is an executable text file." And then there are four options - Run in Terminal, Display, Cancel, Run. (This happens with every file, not just CSS files.) – begtognen Nov 16 '10 at 12:05
5

@begtognen: Sorry for the ultra-late reply. But I've been trying to find a solution for this myself. Just found one - go to Nautlius preferences (Edit > Preferences), select the "Behavior" tab and under the "Executable Text Files" section, select the radio button "View executable text files when they are opened". Fixed the issue for me. – Mussnoon Nov 22 '10 at 23:28
I tried this also, but Emacs doesn't appear in the list of applications. Any thoughts? – MTS Apr 01 '14 at 19:44
No "Remember this application" there. When outdated you might want to either delete your answer, or clearly specify for what versions of Ubuntu it works. Thanks! :-) – Nicolas Raoul Nov 21 '16 at 02:52

haziz · Answer 6 · 2021-11-30T14:16:15.867

9

If you are working from the terminal then I would add the following to your .bashrc file (or the config file for your favorite shell):

export EDITOR=emacs
export VISUAL=emacs

edited Nov 30 '21 at 14:16

answered Dec 05 '12 at 23:37

haziz

2,929

5

+1 for this answer. Particularly if you're a user and don't have sudo or don't want to modify anyone else's preferences – Loisaida Sam Sandberg Dec 13 '19 at 15:01
Add these to ~/.bashrc and run source ~/.bashrc to make this permanent. – Peaceful Feb 28 '23 at 10:17

panticz · Answer 7 · 2018-08-03T08:16:22.873

4

You can set the default text editor for a specific user in # ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list by:

[Default Applications]
text/plain=gedit.desktop

For global configuration for all users you have to modify the /etc/gnome/defaults.list

edited Aug 03 '18 at 08:16

answered Jul 16 '18 at 08:36

panticz

1,718

Matthieu · Answer 8 · 2020-12-31T22:58:01.233

On Ubuntu 20, you need to change the gnome-text-editor alternatives link from gedit to the one you want. However, there usually is only one such editor detected so update-alternatives --config won't work; you'll have to add the editor you want.

E.g. to add notepadqq:

sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gnome-text-editor gnome-text-editor /usr/bin/notepadqq 50
sudo update-alternatives --config gnome-text-editor

etzl · Answer 9 · 2021-12-29T07:14:07.987

3

For some reason I had to use xdg-mime:

xdg-mime default org.gnome.gedit.desktop text/plain # For current user

you can use your system-wide .desktop files under /usr/share/applications/ or local files under ~/.local/share/applications/ or create your own.

edit: It's also helpful to know that user configurations are stored in ~/.config/mimeapps.list which overrides the defaults. source: https://stackoverflow.com/a/64850938/9085151

edited Dec 29 '21 at 07:14

answered Dec 22 '20 at 14:11

etzl

31
4

Probably your application is opening the archive with xdg-open. To see if it is the case open htop in terminal without closing the opened file and find your open file in the tree. – R. W. Prado Aug 26 '21 at 08:33
@R.W.Prado I've changed my OS to debian since then, so I don't have access to that system anymore. But now I can easily change it with update-alternatives. – etzl Aug 26 '21 at 10:53

score 3 · Answer 10 · answered Feb 23 '15 at 13:50

3

sed -i 's/gedit/emacs/g' /etc/gnome/defaults.list

answered Feb 23 '15 at 13:50

cml.co

133

score 2 · Answer 11 · edited May 22 '15 at 09:09

If you would like to replace gedit with any other text editor for all file types, the easiest is to edit the defaults.list file located here:

/usr/share/applications/defaults.list

Just find and replace all gedit.desktop references with your own editor (in this case emacs.desktop). You need root permissions to edit the file. So, just do:

sudo -H gedit /usr/share/applications/defaults.list

Save the file, close it and it's done.

score -1 · Answer 12 · edited Dec 29 '21 at 07:22

-1

To set Pluma as default text editor for all user (global):

sudo sed -i 's|text/plain=gedit.desktop|text/plain=pluma.desktop|g'  /etc/gnome/defaults.list

edited Dec 29 '21 at 07:22

muru

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answered Jan 17 '17 at 12:34

panticz

1,718

How do I change the default text editor?

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