Here’s a list of the top 10 cool gedit features which you probably not aware of, until now. Take a look.
The gedit is the default text for the GNOME desktop. It is used by millions of people who use GNOME every day via Ubuntu, Fedora, and other Linux distributions. It is part of GNOME core applications and serves as a general-purpose, lightweight text editor.
But the innocent-looking gedit text editor comes with super cool productivity features via its settings and installed plugins. With those in place, it can easily compete with other popular text editors out there.
Here are some of them.
Table of Contents
gedit Text Editor Features
1. Insert Current Date and time
Inserting date and time is with just a click is a super handy feature. It is often needed when you are maintaining a log or a journal as a simple text file. Put the cursor where you want to insert date and time, then from the menu click Tools > Insert Date and Time. In the next dialog, use a format of your date and time and click Insert.
2. Enable Auto Save and Create Auto Backup
This text editor has two important features which are turned off by default. They are auto save and auto backup. Go to Menu > Preferences > Editor > File Saving. Enable the Create a backup and Autosave files options. And that’s it. The gedit will save the file automatically, and you do not need to worry about losing your data.
3. Top Keyboard Shortcuts
Keyboard shortcuts are very useful for productivity. This editor also comes with many Keybaord shortcuts apart from the traditional ones. You can find them in Menu > Keyboard shortcuts. For example, you can quickly convert letters to uppercase or lower case using CTRL+U and CTRL+L respectively. Many such features you can find in the below dialog.
4. Themes
The gedit comes with many predefined color schemes for the editor window. Using these, you can change the background of the editor, font style, text color, and more. Find them here in the menu > preferences > Font, and Colors.
5. Split Window and Tab Grouping
Do you know you can group multiple editor tabs with a split window in gedit? Yes, you can. Here’s how. Open multiple tabs using CTRL+T or open multiple documents. Then press ALT+CTRL+N. You should get a split-screen with a separator for your tabs. Now you can work on multiple documents simultaneously without leaving gedit.
You can even create more split windows to organize your file tabs by pressing the ALT+CTRL+N multiple times. And of course, you can drag the tabs to separate groups for arrangements.
The following tips use the gedit plugins. By default, they are installed with the gedit package. You can access them via Menu > Preferences > Plugins.
6. Check and Highlight Incorrect Spellings
You can easily highlight the incorrect words and do a spell check using the Spell Checker plugin. To enable, go to Menu > Preferences > Plugins and check the Spell Checker plugin. Now to do a spell check for your document press SHIFT + F7. It will bring up the spell check dialog.
To highlight all the misspelled words in gedit, enable the options menu – Tools > Highlight Misspelled words. You should see the incorrect words are underlined with a thin red line.
Super handy feature.
7. Quick File Browser
You can browse the local file system using a file browser plugin available. You don’t need to open the file open dialog anymore. To enable go to Menu > Preferences > Plugins and enable File Browser Panel. Then from the menu click View > Side Panel. On the side, the panel header clicks the File Browser.
8. Highlight Similar Word, Letter
If you want to highlight the occurrence of a letter or word in the entire document for easy editing then enable the Quick Highlight plugin from Menu > Preferences > plugins. Now you can select any letter, word and see all the occurrences are highlighted!
9. Syntax Highlighting for Coding
The gedit text editor comes with syntax highlighting for popular programming languages. To enable go to Menu > view > Highlight mode. And select your programming language from the list to highlight them as per their syntax.
10. Python Console
Using a plugin you can get a Python terminal right at the bottom of your gedit window. Go to Menu > Preferences > plugins and enable the Python console plugin. Then enable View > bottom panel from menu. You should be getting a nice Python terminal at the bottom where you can execute Python statements.
Closing Notes
The gedit text editor indeed powerful. Many Linux users are not aware of its built-in features and plugin support. When used properly, you may not need to download and install additional text editors at all. I hope these tips help you to make the most of your favorite text editor on the GNOME desktop.
Cheers.
