This is rather weird, and I haven’t noticed it before. I see this in one particular file (it’s a PHP file, I don’t think that matters, but I’ll give you an info-dump of everything I know).
I have not changed the default settings for tab_indent, it is currently set to 4. However, in my user settings file, tab_indent is set to 3 and everything is set to use spaces, not tabs. In this particular file, I know I had to convert from tabs to spaces. When I did that, the indent set itself to 2. I change it to 3 manually. While I worked in the file, it stayed 3. I closed the file, came back into it a little bit later and the indent was set back to 2. Strange.
I manually changed the indent back to 3, made a change to the file, closed the file, re-opened it–back to 2. I did all that again and I even closed and reopend ST3 and it still goes back to 2 spaces. I can’t duplicate this in any other file even though I know I’ve manually had to convert a couple files from tabs to spaces. I also tried the “guess settings from buffer” and it resets from 3 back to 2. It’s the weirdest thing. Has anyone else seen something like this. I’m on the latest stable ST3 - 3059.