Use Documents → Text Editor to create or open a text document, or right-click a text file in File Browser and choose Open in Text Editor. Scripts, configuration and ordinary text open there on double-click. Markdown keeps its existing reader; the right-click action opens its source in Text Editor. Extensionless and unknown files are recognized by a bounded content check rather than a restrictive extension list.
Use File → New/Open to create document panes. Each file uses the same tabs as other readers; there is no second tab bar inside the editor. Drag a document tab to detach it or split the view; its X or Ctrl/Cmd+W closes only that document. Reopening a file selects its existing pane. A star marks unsaved changes; closing offers Save, Discard or Cancel. Save keeps the original location; Save As selects a new one.
Save All saves open text documents in sequence. Close All closes text document panes, stopping if you cancel an unsaved-changes prompt. Reload from Disk asks before discarding edits. A disk-change banner offers Reload or Keep Buffer. Keeping the buffer does not overwrite the external version: choose Save As to preserve it. Failed saves keep the buffer and explain the problem. Read-only files can be edited for Save As, but their original permissions are never changed for you.
UTF-8 and Unicode BOMs are detected automatically. When decoding fails, select the original encoding, such as Windows-1252. Likely binary files require explicit approval or Force Open as Text. Forced opening does not make a binary format safe to edit. Files above 16 MiB are refused, and files over 1 MiB use simpler presentation. Ordinary saves preserve encoding, endings and final-newline behavior.
File/Edit menus use the platform's conventional shortcuts for open/save, undo/redo, clipboard and selection. Other useful commands:
| Command | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Find / Replace | Ctrl/Cmd+F / Ctrl/Cmd+H |
| Next / previous match | F3 / Shift+F3 |
| Go to line and column | Ctrl/Cmd+G, then line:column |
| Duplicate line or selection | Ctrl/Cmd+D |
| Delete line | Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+K |
| Move selected lines | Alt+Up / Alt+Down |
| Toggle line comment | Ctrl/Cmd+/ for supported languages |
| Indent / unindent | Tab / Shift+Tab |
| Code size | Logistics Settings; Ctrl/Cmd+wheel where supported |
Search stays in a nonmodal panel. It supports case, whole words, regex, wrapping
and a captured selection scope. Select a region before checking In selection.
Regex replacements accept \1, \g<name>, $1 and ${name}, plus \n/\t.
Replace All is one undo step. Close the panel with Escape. Search is limited to
the active document; Find in Files is not included.
The status bar shows position, line count, selection size, encoding, endings, indentation and syntax. Click Encoding or Line Endings to convert on the next save; conversions are explicit. Click Indentation to open the central editor defaults for tabs/spaces and width, or Syntax to choose this document’s language manually. Plain Text disables highlighting.
View → Logistics Settings… opens the central Settings window. Wrapping, line numbers, whitespace, automatic indentation and bracket/quote pairing are under Feature settings → Text Editor → Options. Font family and size are under Appearance & shared controls → Styling. Choose software defaults to edit the repository INI, or personal settings for persistent AppData overrides. ↶ on any personal field restores inheritance; click Save Settings to apply it.
Saved options apply to both split views and keep the document’s chosen syntax language. Whitespace marks can be enabled or disabled without editing text.
Code text defaults to 9 points. Text Editor, IDE, Git hunks and Markdown code blocks share both the family and size. Ctrl/Cmd+wheel changes the personal shared code size (7–24 pt at a common 96-DPI reference). The same saved size now gives comparable text proportions on macOS, Windows and Linux; zoom preserves that saved scale. Line-number gutters resize with the font. The gutter also fits the current line-number digit count and only reserves folding-control space when foldable blocks exist, keeping short files compact. Legacy Cache/TextEditor font preferences migrate once; recent files and recovery remain in that cache, while systemic settings and window geometry use the persistent personal editor INI.
Text Editor windows and hosted document tabs use the file's regular type icon. Workspace tabs close with a neutral × on the right, matching IDE file tabs.
In the main app, Text Editor opens in Open documents. Drag its tab outside the window to detach it; Bring back returns it without losing edits.
Disabling Text Editor removes its browser actions but retains its open buffers. Re-enable it to return to those documents. Browser windows do not own editor buffers. Application closure still checks modified documents. Open sessions are checkpointed privately while you work and restored when you next open Text Editor. Recovery includes unsaved Untitled buffers, edits, encoding and line-ending choices, cursor/selection and scroll positions, and both document views. It does not restore the outer workspace's dock arrangement or detached-window positions. Application shutdown waits for a durable checkpoint and retains editor buffers; closing an individual document still asks Save/Discard/Cancel. If checkpointing fails, ordinary save prompts remain in effect. Recovery never writes your original files. Disk changes since a checkpoint retain normal conflict protection.
File → Keep Session and Close Editors also suspends standalone editors. Restore Editor Session… lets you select an older checkpoint; sessions held by another running instance cannot be restored. Checkpoints live in private Cache/TextEditor/sessions files, with a 64 MiB total and 100-document limit. Checkpoints run about one second after changes; a crash can lose changes made since the last completed checkpoint. Corrupt checkpoints are retained for inspection.
Edit → Text Transformations offers sorting, duplicate removal, trailing-space trimming, case conversion, tab/space conversion, and numbered lines. Line commands operate on complete selected lines, or the whole document without a selection. Case commands use the selection or current word. Conversion to tabs affects leading spaces only. Each transformation is one undo step.
Tools → Format JSON/XML formats the selection, or the document without a selection. Validate JSON/XML reports syntax errors without changing text. JSON formatting preserves numeric tokens and duplicate keys. XML formatting preserves comments but refuses DTD/entity declarations, mixed content, CDATA, and xml:space="preserve" content; mixed content and CDATA can still be validated. Formatting/validation is limited to 1 MiB of text.
Use Edit → Add Next Occurrence (Ctrl/Cmd+Alt+D) to select the current word and add matching occurrences. Alt-click adds a cursor; Alt+Shift-drag makes a rectangular selection. Rectangular Selection from Selection converts an existing selection into a column selection. Short lines clamp at their end; virtual columns are not inserted. There is a limit of 1,000 cursors.
Typing, deletion, Enter/Tab, optional pairing, copy/cut/paste and simple input-method commits work across cursors. A paste containing exactly one line per cursor fills those cursors individually; other text is pasted at every cursor. Escape clears extra cursors before dismissing search. Unsupported navigation/commands return to one cursor, and edits through another view clear stale extra cursors.
View → Code Folding toggles the current region or folds/unfolds all regions. Click a gutter +/− marker to fold a region. Folding uses indentation for Python/YAML, tags for XML/HTML, and lexical delimiters for other highlighted languages; it is structural rather than a language parser. Folding is disabled above 256 KiB or 10,000 lines. Search and Go to Line reveal hidden destinations; editing expands folds before refreshing the regions. Indentation Guides can be toggled in View.
View → Document Views splits one document side by side or above/below. Both views share text, undo history, folding and save state, with independent navigation. Commands and search follow the focused view. Single View removes the extra view.
Compare → Compare with Disk / Another File opens a read-only side-by-side view and a unified diff. Previous/Next visits changes. Use Left Change copies the selected disk/file change into your buffer in one undo step; it never saves the file. The comparison refreshes after each applied change. Applying changes is blocked if the buffer changed after comparison. The disk-change banner also offers Compare. Comparison is limited to 1 MiB and 5,000 lines per side.
View → Find Command… (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+P) searches editor commands and displays shortcuts. Configure Shortcuts… saves bindings globally for editor panes, rejects conflicting bindings and offers Restore Defaults. Clear a binding in the shortcut field to remove it. Shortcut choices are saved separately from normal editor preferences.
When another application edits an open file, choose Merge… in the notice or Compare → Merge Disk Changes…. The editor buffer is on the left, the disk file on the right, and the result in the center. Apply non-conflicting changes, then choose either side for conflicts or edit the result and mark that change resolved. Use Undo/Redo to revise choices. Apply puts the result in your buffer; save when ready. If the buffer or disk changes during review, reopen the merge.
PHP/HTML and Laravel .blade.php highlighting are shared with IDE. Python .pyi
stubs use Python highlighting. Blade directives and single-line interpolations are
supported; multiline Blade template expressions have limited highlighting.
The editing surface uses the full document area with compact outer spacing. File/edit/search commands remain in the application menus, and disk-change controls appear only when needed. Documents owns the outer tab and detached +.
The gutter to the left of line numbers shows additions in green, replacements in blue and deleted-line boundaries in red. Hover over the gutter for its baseline. An edited block with fewer lines also shows a red boundary for the removed lines; extra lines in a replacement block are green. When Git is available, markers compare the live buffer (including unsaved edits) with the file's index. Repository registration and an enabled Git page are not required. Index/branch changes refresh within a few seconds. Otherwise the baseline is the last saved file; markers then disappear after saving. Documents/baselines over 250,000 characters omit markers. Existing explicit save and private recovery checkpoint behavior is unchanged; this editor does not automatically write files.
Click a marker to review its baseline and current lines. Revert change in buffer is a single undoable edit and does not save this editor's file. For Git-backed changes, save first and use Preview Git hunk to stage, then Stage displayed Git hunk. The displayed patch is authoritative: Git may include nearby changes in the same hunk. Staging changes only the index and rejects a stale patch. Untracked files, conflicts, renames and conversion-filter files require Git's file-level workflows. Reopen a review after its buffer or baseline changes.
Open and Save As use one browser with Local files and configured LocalCrypt locations. Inside LocalCrypt, folders and filenames are decoded automatically. Unlock the matching credentials when asked. The location label distinguishes an encrypted destination from a plaintext local export. Save As requires a new filename and preserves the original.
LocalCrypt text opens in a session-only editor with Open, Save and Save As. Its drafts and recent paths are not stored for recovery; save or discard changes before closing. The private text editor is a simpler editing surface than the ordinary editor. Markdown uses the private Markdown editor with its preview. Desktop private text and Markdown opens are limited to 8 MiB.
Saving an ordinary draft into LocalCrypt removes it from active editor recovery and hands it to a session-only editor. If saving or reopening fails, the draft remains available. This does not erase plaintext files or backups created before you selected LocalCrypt. Raw ciphertext directories remain unavailable through ordinary filesystem operations; choosing the LocalCrypt location performs both name and content encryption.
Session-only text editor tabs and windows begin with 🕵️ Private -, followed by the filename. The prefix stays visible after editing or Save As, including export to Local storage, because the draft remains session-only.