In this post I will share some tips on how to use Sublime Text on Windows. These tips are collected over time and will be updated frequently (hopefully).

Open and close side bar#

You can use Ctrl+K+B to open and close the side bar. The correct way to use this shortcut: hold on Ctrl, first press K and then press B.

Change the case of selected text#

To turn the selected text into upper case, use the shortcut key Ctrl+K+U. Here is how exactly to operate: first you need to press Ctrl, then press K and release it, finally, you press the U key, do not release the Ctrl key in the process. To turn the selected text into lower case, use the shortcut key Ctrl+K+L.

To turn the selected text into title case, you need to add a custom key binding. Open your key binding file and add the following setting:

{ "keys": ["ctrl+k", "ctrl+t"], "command": "title_case" }

Then you can convert the selected text into title case with the shortcut Ctrl+K+T.

Select text between quotation marks#

You can use the Plugin BracketHighlighter to achieve what you want. First, you need to install this Plugin. Then, go to Preferences --> Key Bindings. Add the following key binding setting,

{
    "no_outside_adj": null,
    "keys": ["ctrl+alt+super+s"],
    "command": "bh_key",
    "args":
    {
        "lines" : true,
        "plugin":
        {
            "type": ["__all__"],
            "command": "bh_modules.bracketselect"
        }
    }
}

Then you can use the shortcut key Ctrl+Alt+Super+S to select texts between quotation marks.

Show current file in side bar#

In the current file, right click your mouse. In the pop-up contextual menu, choose Reveal in Side Bar and the file will be highlighted in the side bar.

Prevent a file from opening in the tab when I right click on it#

One annoying thing when using Sublime-Text is that when you want to right click on a file in the sidebar to call its contextual menu, the file is automatically opened in the tab. If you want to disable this behaviour, you can add an option in your user Settings:

{"preview_on_click": false,}

After using this option, you can left click on a file twice to open it.

Open a file in the current folder quickly#

You can press Ctrl+P and start to type the filename. See the following image,

Find a string in all files in current project#

Press Ctrl+Shift+F, you will see three boxes: Find, Where and Replace. Type the string you want to search in Find box , and specify the folder you want to search in Where box.

The search result will be presented in a page called Find Results. If you want to go to specific file which contains the searched string, double click on the line.

This tip is based on a wonderful stackoverflow post.

Rename the current file#

When you are editing a file, you may wish to change its name. First you should [reveal it in the side bar](# Show current file in side bar). Then right click on the file and rename it.

Quick goto a class or a function#

By pressing Ctrl+R, we can navigate to functions/class in the current file. This ability is really powerful and it works for multiple source file types such as \*.py, \*.md, \*.cpp.

Edit a variable simultaneously#

Sometimes, we want to rename a variable name, but it have several occurrences in the source code. It is easy to select all occurrences of a variable in Sublime Text. You should first point the cursor to the variable and then hit Alt+F3. Now you can edit the variable simultaneously.

Quickly go to a line#

Press Ctrl+G and enter the line number, then press Enter, you will go to that line.

Unindent lines#

You have two choices. The first is to use Shift+Tab, which works only for multiple selected lines. In order to make it work for a single line, set

"shift_tab_unindent": true,

in your user settings.

You can also use Ctrl+[ to un-indent lines on Windows and Linux (Ctrl+] is used to indent lines).

Stop hidden files and folders from showing in the sidebar#

By default, hidden file and folders (files and folders starting with a dot) are shown in the sidebar. According to this Stackoverflow post, to disable this behaviour, you need to edit the User settings (just click Preferences -> Settings): add the following options to the User setting file:

"file_exclude_patterns":
    [
        "*.pyc", "*.pyo", "*.exe", "*.dll", "*.obj","*.o","*.a", "*.lib", "*.so", "*.dylib", "*.ncb", "*.sdf", "*.suo", "*.pdb", "*.idb", ".DS_Store",
        "*.class", "*.psd", "*.db", "*.sublime-workspace", ".*"
    ],
"folder_exclude_patterns":
    [
        ".svn", ".git", ".hg", "CVS", ".*"
    ]

The pattern .* matches any file or folder which starts with a dot. The above options works effectively to prevent the hidden files and folders from showing up in your sidebar. You can also add your own custom patterns to the two exclude lists.

References#

• Disable previewing file when right click on it.
• Search a file in current folder.
• Open and close side bar and more.
• Documentation on search a string in current project.