Change Edit settings in CotEditor on Mac

In the CotEditor app on your Mac, use Edit settings to choose how the editor behaves while editing.

To change these settings, choose CotEditor > Settings, then click Edit.

Indentation
OptionDescription
Prefer using spaces/tabs

Set the character used for indentation and for the Tab key. Choose one of the following:

  • Spaces: Insert multiple space characters based on the indent width.
  • Tabs: Insert a single tab character.
Indent width

Set the number of spaces that a tab character represents.
Detect indent style on document opening

Detect whether the opened document uses spaces or tabs for indentation. If the style can be detected, CotEditor automatically adjusts whether typing the Tab key expands to spaces. If there are not enough indented lines to detect the style, the default setting is used.
Automatically indent while typing

Automatically indent new lines when you press Return or Enter. The new line begins at the same indentation level as the previous line.
Indent selection with Tab key

When you press the Tab key while text is selected, the selected lines are indented instead of being replaced with whitespace. When you press Tab-Shift keys, the selected lines are outdented.
Whitespace
OptionDescription
Automatically trim trailing whitespace

Remove whitespace at the end of lines automatically while typing.
Including whitespace-only lines

Remove all whitespace in lines that contain only whitespace.
Comment
OptionDescription
Insert comment delimiters after indent

When commenting out text, place the comment delimiter after the lowest indentation level within the selection.
Append a space to comment delimiter

When commenting out text, insert a space between the comment delimiter and the commented text.
Content parse
OptionDescription
Link URL in document

Highlight URLs in the document and make them clickable.
Highlight matching braces

Briefly highlight the matching brace when the insertion point moves across one of a pair of braces such as “()”, “[]”, or “{}”.
Highlight instances of selected text

Highlight all instances of the selected text in the editor after the specified delay. Highlighting occurs only when the selected text is a complete word.

See also