Sublime Forum

Why does sublime have different defaults for Mac?

#1

I’ve tried googling this but didn’t find any info. Why do these settings get overridden in Mac’s OS-specific defaults?

// Set to false to disable scrolling past the end of the buffer.
// On Mac, this value is overridden in the platform specific settings, so
// you'll need to place this line in your user settings to override it.
"scroll_past_end": true,

// This controls what happens when pressing up or down when on the first
// or last line.
// On Mac, this value is overridden in the platform specific settings, so
// you'll need to place this line in your user settings to override it.
"move_to_limit_on_up_down": false,

// [...]

// If true, the selected text will be copied into the find panel when it's
// shown.
// On Mac, this value is overridden in the platform specific settings, so
// you'll need to place this line in your user settings to override it.
"find_selected_text": true,

// [...]

// Set to true to close windows as soon as the last file is closed, unless
// there's a folder open within the window.
// On Mac, this value is overridden in the platform specific settings, so
// you'll need to place this line in your user settings to override it.
"close_windows_when_empty": false,

// Show the full path to files in the title bar.
// On Mac, this value is overridden in the platform specific settings, so
// you'll need to place this line in your user settings to override it.
"show_full_path": true,

I just don’t understand why Sublime should have different defaults for mac, it makes no sense. Why were these decisions made? In particular, find_selected_text is one of the weirdest things to change between platforms.

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#2

MacOS apps have certain behaviors vs other OSs in general. While some apps deviate from this, I state this as a generality. I think macOS users can be more opinionated about these kind of things than people use OSs such as Linux, which often have behaviors all over the place :slightly_smiling_face:. I am a macOS user, but I’m less particular about these subtle differences.

Many macOS users may find a change in certain behaviors unexpected, and I think Sublime is trying to make the editor behave as many macOS users would expect so it feels more mac-like, but if you’d like a unified experience across OSs, you can set them up just like the defaults on Windows and/or Linux.

I’m not sure if these originated from requests from users or if these were observations from the developers, and they tried to match macOS expectations. Regardless, you can set them to whatever you like.

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