How to Customize Gedit Preferences

Edited 1 day ago by ExtremeHow Editorial Team

GeditCustomizationSettingsLinuxEditingToolsUser InterfaceConfigurationWorkflowSoftware

Gedit, the default text editor for the GNOME desktop environment, is a powerful and lightweight text editor designed to offer simplicity and usability. Although it's easy to use straight out of the box, its true potential shines when you customize its preferences to suit your needs. This guide explains how you can personalize Gedit's settings to enhance your workflow and make your coding or text editing more efficient and fun.

Introduction to Gedit

Gedit is more than just a basic text editor; it's a versatile tool designed for users who want an accessible but highly configurable environment for writing code or editing text. Like many text editors, it allows you to edit files, but it also supports multiple programming languages, includes syntax highlighting, and can be extended with plugins. This guide helps you learn how to leverage Gedit to your advantage by customizing its features to meet your specific needs.

The importance of customizing your editor

Customizing your text editor can significantly improve your productivity. A well-configured text editor not only reduces the time it takes to complete tasks, but also makes your interaction with the software more intuitive. Whether you are a coder, a writer, or just occasionally edit documents, some customizations can positively impact your efficiency and effectiveness.

Accessing Gedit preferences

Before diving into specific customization techniques, it's essential to know how to access the Preferences menu in Gedit. This is where you'll make most of the changes described in this guide.

To access Preferences in Gedit, follow these steps:

1. Open Gedit by searching for gedit in your applications menu or typing gedit into your terminal.
2. Once Gedit opens, click the “Edit” menu at the top of the window.
3. Select "Preferences" from the dropdown menu that appears.

This action opens the Preferences window, where you can begin customizing Gedit to suit your needs.

Preferences menu

In the Preferences window, you will find several tabs, each of which offers different customization options. These usually include View, Editor, Fonts and Colors, Plugins, and a few others depending on your version of Gedit and the plugins installed. Let's look at each in detail.

View tab

The View tab deals with the visual aspects of the editor, helping you customize how content is displayed in Gedit. Options in this tab include line numbers, highlighting the current line, and more.

• Show line numbers: Enabling this option displays line numbers along with your text, a feature especially useful when debugging code.
• Highlight current line: This option highlights the line where the cursor is currently located, helping you keep track of your position in the document.
• Display right margin: The right margin, which is often used to indicate the boundary of a column, can be toggled and its position adjusted. This feature is useful in ensuring code readability by following line length best practices.

Editor tab

The Editor tab provides options for text behavior and control. You can set preferences related to text wrapping, indentation and backup, etc.

• Enable text wrapping: You can enable automatic wrapping of text so that lines do not extend beyond the visible area. This can be especially useful for readability.
• Indentation: Set your preferences for how lines are indented, especially when coding. Choose between spaces or tabs, and set how many spaces or tabs to use.
• Tab Width: If you’re using tabs for indentation, you can set how wide each tab stop is. This adjusts how much space each tab takes up.
• Create a backup copy: This option allows Gedit to automatically create a backup copy of the file before saving changes. The backup file is usually saved with a tilde (~) sign.

Fonts and colors tab

In the Fonts & Colors tab, you can customize the aesthetic of the Gedit interface. This section allows personalizing the fonts and color scheme used.

• Font: Choose the font style and size as per your preference for readability and convenience. Monospaced font is usually a good choice for coding.
• Color scheme: Choose from a predefined color scheme or create a custom scheme to suit your preferences. These schemes typically define text, background colors, and syntax highlighting colors.

Plugins tab

Plugins extend the functionality of Gedit, enabling additional features that are not available by default. The Plugins tab lists installed plugins and allows you to enable or disable them as needed

To improve your Gedit experience, consider finding and installing plugins for the features you find most useful. Here are some popular plugins to consider:

• Snippets: Allows you to create and manage code snippets for quick insertion, speeding up repetitive coding tasks.
• Terminal: Provides a built-in terminal window within Gedit, which can be invaluable for running scripts or monitoring output without leaving the editor.
• File Browser Panel: Adds a side panel for opening and easy navigation of files in your project directories.
• Spell Checker: Identifies spelling errors in your documents, which is extremely useful when writing text documents.

To add more plugins, you can search for them online, as Gedit supports many plugins developed by the community.

Creating a custom color scheme

If the default color schemes don't satisfy your preferences, you can create your own color scheme. This requires editing the CSS or XML files that define the styles used by Gedit.

Here's a basic step-by-step guide for creating a custom color scheme:

1. First, locate the color scheme directory. This is usually under ~/.local/share/gedit/styles or /usr/share/gedit/styles.
2. Create a new XML or CSS file for your scheme, or copy and modify an existing scheme file to use as a template.
3. Define colors for different text types such as keywords, strings, comments, and background.
4. Save the file and restart Gedit to see your new scheme listed in the Fonts & Colors preferences tab.

Advanced customization

For more technical users, Gedit offers even more customization capabilities through its GSettings and dconf settings. These configurations can be used to modify behavior that is not displayed in the regular preferences menu. Use these options with caution, as incorrect settings can change the way Gedit functions.

Using GSettings

GSettings is a command-line tool used to change settings for GNOME applications, including Gedit. Below is an example of how you can use GSettings to change some features:

gsettings set org.gnome.gedit.preferences.editor wrap-mode 'word'

This command sets the text wrapping mode to 'Word', which ensures that text wraps at word boundaries.

Using the dconf editor

For a GUI-based approach, the dconf editor offers a more user-friendly way of changing settings. It is an optional application that can be installed through your package manager. Once installed, you can navigate through Gedit's preferences and adjust them visually.

Conclusion

Customizing Gedit can transform it from a simple text editor into a powerful tool tailored to your individual workflow. By adjusting settings like line numbers, syntax highlighting, color schemes, and plugins, you can create a coding or writing environment that realizes your potential.

Remember, the key to effective customization is to explore these options gradually and find out which supports your specific work style most effectively. Whether you're a software developer, a writer, or an occasional document editor, Gedit's flexibility through preferences ensures that it can become an indispensable part of your toolkit.

Have fun experimenting with these settings, and enjoy editing!

  Share This Article

If you find anything wrong with the article content, you can request an update