How do I make Sublime Text 3 the default text editor

Question

I'd like to replace gedit, and use Sublime Text 3 as my default text editor for all text files on my Ubuntu system. Can you let me know how do I go about making this change?

Solution

These instructions assume that you have installed Sublime Text 3 using the .deb file provided for Ubuntu. If you downloaded the tarball and installed it manually, you will need to change the paths below to your install location.

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First, make sure that /usr/share/applications/sublime_text.desktop exists (sublime-text.desktop on some systems):

ls /usr/share/applications/sublime_text.desktop

Then, open /usr/share/applications/defaults.list with Sublime:

subl /usr/share/applications/defaults.list

Search for all instances of gedit (org.gnome.gedit on some systems) and replace them with sublime_text. Save the file, log out and back in, and you should be all set.

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If for some reason /usr/share/applications/sublime_text.desktop (or sublime-text.desktop) doesn't exist, create it:

sudo touch /usr/share/applications/sublime_text.desktop

Open it in Sublime:

subl /usr/share/applications/sublime_text.desktop

and paste the following into it:

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Name=Sublime Text
GenericName=Text Editor
Comment=Sophisticated text editor for code, markup and prose
Exec=/opt/sublime_text/sublime_text %F
Terminal=false
MimeType=text/plain;
Icon=sublime-text
Categories=TextEditor;Development;
StartupNotify=true
Actions=Window;Document;

[Desktop Action Window]
Name=New Window
Exec=/opt/sublime_text/sublime_text -n
OnlyShowIn=Unity;

[Desktop Action Document]
Name=New File
Exec=/opt/sublime_text/sublime_text --command new_file
OnlyShowIn=Unity;

However, if you installed Sublime Text using the .deb file downloaded from sublimetext.com, the file should already exist.

Comments

[Ernesto Moriel]

I've been doing that, I was hoping to find out if there were a system wide change I could make for all text files.

[masulzen]

I thought that that would change it for all of the txt's... maybe I'm wrong, but I was pretty sure...

[Digikata]

This desktop file works great on my system except that the "New Window" or "New File" right click actions cause the mouse cursor to go into a busy-spin mode. Everything seems to work normally though...

[user3165887]

I can not get this to work in Ubuntu 13.10 with Sublime Text 2, I did make sure that sublime_text.desktop was changed to reflect sublime-text-2.desktop, any suggestions?

[Gundars Mēness]

btw, its sublime-text not sublime_text, installed from official repo; 14.04

[matanster]

I can not get this to work in Ubuntu 13.10 with Sublime Text 3, not with sublime_text nor sublime-text.

[Oliboy50]

Works in Ubuntu 14.10 & Sublime Text 3. Thanks!

[Álvaro]

I'm using Ubuntu 14.10 with Sublime Text 3 and to make it work I wrote sublime-text (with the dash)

[talsibony]

for some reason I wasnt able to do it on ubuntu 14.10 I was end up installing sublime from Package Manage following the askubuntu.com/questions/172698/… and everything worked out of the box, then I did diff between the desktop files I found some changes

[kleinfreund]

I got it to work by 1.) renaming the file in /usr/share/applications/ from sublime_text.desktop to sublime-text.desktop and 2.) removing a duplicate rm ~/.local/share/applications/sublime_text.desktop.

[ViniciusArruda]

I had to do sudo subl /usr/share/applications/defaults.list and change all occurrences of gedit.desktop to sublime-text.desktop.

[Muhammad Gelbana]

If it's missing from the list, apply the changes mentioned here: askubuntu.com/a/755041/80283

[Admin]

Works fantastic on Ubuntu 20.04.4 thank you!