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

score 130 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 17 '24 at 23:40

130

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 still works in 22.04.

edited Apr 17 '24 at 23:40

Andreas Haferburg

111

answered Aug 28 '12 at 22:26

Benjamin

2,235

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 – mathlete 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
Still works in 22.04 – Andreas Haferburg Apr 17 '24 at 17:03
1

In Ubuntu 24, if the file is on Desktop the "Open with" option in context menu is replaced with "Open with other application" which does not allow to set the default program. Either use a file that is not on Desktop or first "Show in Files" from the context menu to visit the file. – MOON Jun 05 '24 at 12:16

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

73

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

1,101

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 21 · Answer 3 · edited Aug 15 '17 at 17:28

21

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

92,169

answered Aug 14 '17 at 17:04

oshliaer

363

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

16

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

answered Dec 10 '12 at 15:19

shrinidhi joshi

344

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

5,236

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

12

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

3,077

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

1,956

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

61

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

207,970

answered Jan 17 '17 at 12:34

panticz

1,956

How do I change the default text editor?

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