3.2 to 4.0 Changes

GPU Rendering

• New hardware_acceleration setting will composite the UI on the GPU
• By default, GPU rendering is enabled on Mac, and disabled on Windows and Linux
• Details about the active GPU will be displayed in the Console

Context-aware Auto Complete

• The auto complete engine now suggests completions based on patterns in existing code
• Uses the entire project as a source, instead of just the current view
• Plugins may specify symbol kind info to be displayed in suggestions list

Tab Multi-Select

• Multiple tabs can be selected using ctrl/cmd, their contents will be shown side-by-side
• Selecting multiple files from the sidebar will also preview them simultaneously
• Included themes have a tab connector joining the active sheet and tab when using sheet multi-select
• The sidebar can now select multiple files using alt
• Goto Anything allows opening tabs side-by-side using ctrl/cmd
• The Definition popup has a dedicated button for opening files side-by-side
• Multiple tabs can also be selected from the tab dropdown
• The menu Selection/Tab Selection contains various options for manipulating tab multi-select
• File/New View into File has been replaced by File/Split View using multi-select

Python 3.8 API

• Added a Python 3.8 API environment for plugins
• Plugins can choose Python version via .python-version file in plugin folder
• Existing plugins are fully supported via legacy Python 3.3 API
• Many API improvements and additions - see API section for more details

Goto Symbol

• Goto Symbol in Project is now significantly faster on huge projects
• Icons are now shown next to symbols, indicating the symbol kind
• Symbols with 3 characters or less are now indexed

Syntax Definitions

• Added out of the box support for TypeScript, JSX and TSX - thanks to Thomas Smith
• Added ability to "branch" within syntax definitions, for non-deterministic or multi-line constructs
• Many syntax highlighting improvements, including significant improvements to:
  • Erlang, with thanks to deathaxe
• Significantly improved load times, match times and reduced cache size on disk
• embed is now lazy loaded, resulting in much higher performance for syntaxes like markdown
• Added branch and fail for non-deterministic parsing
• Added version: 2 to fix edge cases while retaining backwards compatibility
• Added extends to inherit from another syntax definition. Multiple inheritance is supported, provided all parents have the same base syntax
• Added hidden_extensions
• Allow using pop alongside push/set/embed/branch
• Fixed a performance issue with bounded repeats in regular expressions
• Syntax tests can now assert that reindent is working as expected
• Syntax tests can now assert that symbols are indexed
• Prevent infinite include loops via with_prototype
• Fixed a number of scope related bugs
• Fixed some regex capture related bugs
• Added more information to the Show Scope Name popup

OS Compatibility

• The following operating systems are no longer supported as a result of adding Python 3.8:
  • OS X 10.7
  • OS X 10.8
  • Windows XP
  • Windows Vista

Platform Integration

• Added automatic dark/light theme and color scheme switching, based on OS theme changes
• subl - can now be used to read from stdin on all platforms
• Windows will remember their Virtual Desktop/Space/Workspace, controlled by the remember_workspace setting
• Scroll bars now follow platform conventions when clicking on them. Configurable using Scroll Bar.sublime-mousemap
• Mac: Releases use universal binaries with Apple Silicon support
• Mac: Updated icon to follow macOS 11 style
• Mac: Windows will now stay maximized when using Mac window tabs
• Mac: Fix various issues with the wrong cursor being used
• Linux: ARM64 builds are now available
• Linux: Text drag and drop is now supported
• Linux: Added proper support for Wayland
• Linux: Touch screen events are now handled
• Linux: Better support for copy+paste with other applications that don't support utf8 text
• Linux: Native file dialogs like those for KDE will be used when configured
• Windows: IME preview and multi-select support
• Windows, Linux: Added support for custom title bars
• Windows, Linux: Use vsync for animations instead of a fixed 60hz
• Mac, Linux: Improved compatibility with some keyboard layouts

Application Behavior

• Added Safe Mode, to simulate a clean install. Enabled by passing --safe-mode on the command line or holding shift+alt/option at startup on Windows/macOS respectively
• Added Help/Report a Bug to link to our public issue tracker
• Added options to hot_exit setting to control behavior when the last window is closed
• Fixed a possible case where an update loses the current session
• Settings containing a UTF-8 BOM will no longer fail to load
• Added support for previewing TGA and PSD images
• Added close_deleted_files setting to control behavior of session restoration when files have been deleted on disk
• Popup windows now use virtual windows for improved performance
• Improved performance when loading files with very long lines
• Improved rendering performance on very long lines
• Improved performance with large session files
• Data directories have dropped the "3", though if a "3" directory still exists it will be used
• Mac: Quick Switch Project now works without any windows open
• Mac, Linux: The cache and index are now located in the proper location (~/.cache and ~/Library/Caches respectively)

Auto Complete

• Typing the full tab trigger of a snippet will move it to the top of the results
• Manually typing in the only available completion will hide the auto complete popup
• .sublime-completion files can now specify annotation, kind and details
• Ranking quality improvements
• Improved behavior of completions starting with non-word characters
• auto_complete_trailing_symbols is now disabled by default
• cancelCompletion will no longer prevent manual invocation
• Added the auto_complete_when_likely setting
• Added auto_complete_preserve_order setting
• Added auto_complete_include_snippets_when_typing setting
• Added auto_complete_use_index setting
• Added auto_complete_use_history setting to control if previous choices are automatically selected
• Running the auto_complete command when auto complete is already showing will re-query plugins for results
• auto_complete_selector now applies to the position before the just-typed in character, matching auto_complete_triggers

Input Handling

• Modifier key taps can now be used as part of a key binding. For example, ["ctrl", "ctrl"] will trigger when Ctrl is pressed twice without pressing any other keys in between
• Linux: AltGr can now be used in key bindings via altgr
• Linux: Added a workaround for a touchscreen driver bug, which would cause right click and mouse scrolling to stop working
• Linux: When the menu is hidden, pressing alt will show it
• Mac: Fix Pinyin input
• Mac: Keypad keys can now be bound to as expected
• Mac: Added key bindings for macOS application tabs
• Windows, Linux: Hide mouse cursor when typing. Controlled via hide_pointer_while_typing setting
• Windows, Linux: Fixed being unable to bind Ctrl+Break

Editor Control

• Added File/Print, which prints via a browser
• Added Edit/Copy as HTML
• Build systems now use new annotations functionality instead of phantoms, reducing re-flow
• Undo history is preserved in the session
• Comments and layout are preserved when programmatically editing preferences
• Caret blinking is disabled by default. Set caret_style setting to smooth for previous behavior
• Improved automatic indentation detection
• Added relative line numbers, controlled by the relative_line_numbers setting
• Added setting scroll_context_lines
• Added setting hide_pointer_while_typing
• Added setting control_character_style
• Added Project/Recent/Remove Deleted
• Added chain command to run multiple commands in series
• switch_file command now handles filenames with compound extensions
• The scroll_past_end setting now supports customizing the scroll distance using numbers from 0.0 to 1.0
• Double-clicking a semi-transient sheet's tab will now fully open the sheet
• trim_trailing_white_space_on_save can now be set to "not_on_caret"
• trim_trailing_white_space_on_save now trims only newly inserted trailing whitespace by default. Controlled via trim_only_modified_white_space setting
• Expanded draw_white_space setting, supporting leading and trailing white space
• Unicode white space characters, such as the zero width no-break space, are now drawn as hex values. Controlled via draw_unicode_white_space setting
• Fixed spelling correction to support languages with upper case characters after start of word
• Added commands to simplify customizing the active theme or color scheme
• Quick Switch Project will open the selected project in a new window if Ctrl (Cmd on Mac) is held down
• Added wrap_width_style preference
• Added console_max_history_lines
• Added additional settings to control the status bar: show_sidebar_button, show_indentation and show_syntax
• Console now uses Python syntax highlighting by default
• Added Central European (Mac) encoding support
• Key Bindings: Join Lines is now on Ctrl+Shift+J / Cmd+Shift+J
• Key Bindings: Expand Selection to Indentation is no longer bound by default
• Key Bindings: Ctrl+J / Cmd+J is now used as a prefix for sequential key bindings, similar to Ctrl+K / Cmd+K
• Code Folding: fixed some edge-case incorrect behaviors
• Linux: Added support for alternate font weight names
• Linux: Selection is no longer cleared when another application makes a selection
• Linux: Added Ctrl+Space to trigger Auto Complete
• Linux, Windows: Added Alt+Shift+Left Mouse Button as an alternative column selection binding
• Linux, Windows: Added Shift+F10 key binding to open the context menu

Text Commands

• Macros now record Find commands
• Reworked Jump Back and Jump Forward commands
• Improved behavior of Wrap Paragraph
• Improved behavior of Swap Lines
• Added Revert Diff Hunk
• Added Selection/Expand Selection as a general mechanism to expand the selection
• Selection/Split into Lines will now split a selection into words if the selection doesn't contain any newlines
• Show a sum in the status bar when there are multiple selections and all of them are numbers
• set_file_type command now accepts "scope:" prefixed syntax names
• Fixed sort_lines replacing unicode newlines with regular ones

Snippets

• Added auto_complete_include_snippets setting, for disabling auto complete integration
• Added ignored_snippets setting, for disabling default snippets

Indexing (Goto Definition)

• Files ignored by .gitignore are not indexed by default. Controlled via index_exclude_gitignore setting
• Files without known extensions are no longer indexed by default. Controlled via index_skip_unknown_extensions setting
• Improved behavior with constantly changing files
• Significantly improved load times

Files and Folders

• Saving files is now asynchronous
• Improved performance when adding directories with extreme amounts of files
• When save_on_focus_lost is enabled, closing an unsaved file will save and close it, instead of prompting to save
• Improved behavior of save_on_focus_lost in conjunction with administrator owned files
• Added reload_file_on_change setting to control if files are automatically reloaded or not
• folder_exclude_patterns and folder_include_patterns now support project-relative paths, by starting the path with //
• Folders in the sidebar can be recursively expanded via alt+arrow key
• Added preview_on_click setting to support only previewing files on left click
• Windows: Fixed Open Containing Folder for UNC paths
• Windows: Fixed Save dialog not showing for new files with control characters on the first line
• Windows: Fixed Ctrl+Backspace inserting a DEL character when a dialog is open in the background
• Linux: Fix recreated directories not working correctly with file change monitoring
• Linux: Recursively expanding and collapsing sidebar folders now works with alt or super

Find

• Find results are highlighted on the scroll bar, controlled by highlight_find_results_in_scrollbar
• Find in Selection now highlights the area that will be searched
• Commands can now be run without the find panel having input focus
• Fix keypad enter not working in find panel
• Improved find history behavior
• Find: Various performance improvements with large files using graceful degradation
• Find: Fixed adjacent matches being skipped when find in selection is in use
• Find: Fixed find in selection option not being cleared when changing tabs
• Find: Selection will no longer be reset after Find All is used when finding in selection
• Find: Results are now properly highlighted on Find All when close_find_after_find_all is turned off
• Find in Files: Improved performance with large numbers of matches
• Find in Files: Can now filter by .gitignore
• Find in Files: Added Preserve Case option for replacements
• Find in Files: Fix not recursing into directories on networked file systems
• Find in Files: Hide rulers by default in find results
• Find in Files: Added Find/Cancel Find in Files menu item
• Find in Files: Binary file patterns are applied when an explicit folder is given
• Find in Files: Using "Find in Folder…" from the sidebar context menu will apply project file filters
• Find in Files: Added close_find_after_find_all preference
• Find in Files: Added close_find_after_replace_all preference

UI

• Changed default color scheme to Mariana
• Added Default Dark theme
• Added themed_title_bar setting
• Changed file tab style, adding file_tab_style setting
• Goto Symbol shows more information about symbols
• Definitions hover popup shows more information about symbols
• Sheets without input focus are now dimmed when using included themes
• Added a New Tab button in the tab bar, and hide_new_tab_button setting
• Added show_tab_close_buttons_on_left setting
• Added highlight_gutter and highlight_line_number settings
• Added the ability to auto hide the menu, tabs, and status bar when typing. See auto_hide_menu and related settings
• Window title bar can be controlled by show_rel_path and show_project_first settings
• Tab context menu now includes Close Unmodified Files and Close Deleted Files entries
• Side bar row highlights now properly reflect the selected tabs
• Color Schemes: Added glow font option
• Color Schemes: Added support for the underline font style
• Color Schemes: Added new property, inactive_selection_border
• Color Schemes: Slightly darkened the background of Mariana
• Color Schemes: Added support for stippled_underline and squiggly_underline
• Color Schemes: .hidden-tmTheme files are now supported by the .sublime-color-scheme convertor
• Themes: Included themes use variables extensively, making customization simpler
• Themes: Added style property for title_bar element, for better integration with OS "dark modes"
• Themes: The tree_row for the file with input focus now gets the attribute highlighted
• Themes: The settings key now supports objects, with keys being settings and values being a boolean, string or array of strings
• Themes: Added sheet_contents class to text, image and HTML sheets
• Themes: Added the background_modifier property for sheet_contents
• Themes: Added a number of new attributes to tab_control for richer tab theming
• Themes: The highlighted attribute is only applied to the most recently active sheet, rather that the most recently active sheet in each group
• Themes: tab_control and sheet_contents classes now synchronize their highlighted and hover attributes
• Themes: tooltip controls now support animations to their opacity
• Linux: Show sequential key bindings in the menu
• Linux: Fixed context menu position being slightly offset

Spell Checking

• Updated dictionaries
• Added support for non-utf8 dictionaries
• Updated Hunspell for improved suggestions
• System dictionaries are now available on Linux
• Dictionaries in ~/Library/Spelling are now available on Mac

Rendering

• Properly query glyph extents in order to avoid cutting off large glyphs
• Windows, Linux: Added support for per-display subpixel ordering
• Mac: Improved window resize performance
• Windows: Fixed rendering bug where other applications could cause persistent artifacts via window animations
• Windows: Add support for color emoji

API

• Improved coverage of plugin profiling
• The cProfile module is now included on Linux
• Added HTML sheets, which can be created via window.new_html_sheet()
• repr now works as expected
• Updated OpenSSL to 1.1.1j
• .sublime-commands files now support filtering commands via the "platform" key
• Minihtml now handles list-style-type CSS property - circle, square and disc
• Minihtml now processes subl: links, running them as commands
• Minihtml now supports white-space: nowrap
• Improved minihtml rendering performance
• EventListener has many new features and bug fixes
  • on_query_completions() can now
    • Return suggestions asynchronously
    • Return command completions
    • Include symbol kind information
  • New: on_init() is called once with list of views opened before plugin was loaded
  • New: on_exit() is called immediately before plugin_host exits, after API is shut down
  • New: on_text_changed() and on_text_changed_async() provide detailed modification info
  • New methods:
    • on_reload()
    • on_revert()
    • on_new_window()
    • on_new_window_async()
    • on_pre_close_window()
    • on_pre_move()
    • on_post_move()
    • on_post_move_async()
    • on_new_project()
    • on_new_project_async()
    • on_load_project()
    • on_load_project_async()
    • on_pre_save_project()
    • on_post_save_project()
    • on_post_save_project_async()
    • on_pre_close_project()
    • on_associate_buffer()
  • Fixed on_selection_modified() to not be called twice when left clicking
  • Fixed on_selection_modified() begin called on non-selection state changes
• New TextChangeListener for getting callbacks when a text buffer is changed
  • Can be dynamically bound to a Buffer using TextChangeListener.attach and TextChangeListener.detach
  • Methods:
    • on_text_changed()
    • on_text_changed_async()
    • on_revert()
    • on_revert_async()
    • on_reload()
    • on_reload_async()
• Sheet has some new methods:
  • file_name()
  • group()
  • close()
  • is_semi_transient()
  • Sheet.is_transient
• View has a number of changes and improvements
  • Fixed newly created views not having a valid viewport before being returned to the API
  • add_regions() now has an annotations parameter, to allow adding a per-region annotation to the buffer. The exec command uses this API for build errors
  • add_regions() calls that add an underline now have that underline applied to whitespace characters
  • show() now takes keep_to_left and animate parameters
  • text_point() and related functions now accept a clamp_column parameter
  • Added "glow" to style_for_scope()
  • Added View.rowcol_utf8(), View.rowcol_utf16(), View.text_point_utf8() and View.text_point_utf16()
  • Added sublime.KEEP_ON_SELECTION_MODIFIED, which can be passed to show_popup()
  • New: element() returns a string describing widget views (find input, quick panel input, etc)
  • New: assign_syntax() sets the syntax used in a view, supports Syntax objects, paths and scope selectors
  • New: syntax() returns the currently set Syntax
  • New: clones()
  • New: sheet() and sheet_id()
  • New: export_to_html()
• Window has some changes and improvements:
  • show_quick_panel now accepts placeholder text, via the placeholder argument
  • Added sublime.CLEAR_TO_RIGHT and sublime.SEMI_TRANSIENT for use with open_file()
  • Added the flag sublime.REPLACE_MRU for use with open_file(). When multiple sheets are selected, this flag will cause the opened file to replace the most recently used sheet with the file being opened
  • Added the flag sublime.WANT_EVENT for use with show_quick_panel(). This will pass an event dict to the on_select callback. The dict will contain the key modifier_keys, which will be a dict that may contain zero or more of the keys: primary, ctrl, super, alt, altgr
  • open_file now accepts sublime.ADD_TO_SELECTION as a flag
  • New: selected_sheets(), selected_sheets_in_group() and select_sheets()
  • New: workspace_file_name()
  • New: bring_to_front()
• sublime.ok_cancel_dialog() and sublime.yes_no_cancel_dialog() now accept an optional title parameter
• Added sublime.open_dialog, sublime.save_dialog and sublime.select_folder_dialog
• Syntax definitions can be queried via sublime.list_syntaxes(), sublime.find_syntax(), sublime.syntax_from_path(), sublime.find_syntax_by_name(), sublime.find_syntax_by_scope(), and sublime.find_syntax_for_file(). They return Syntax objects
• Improved sys.stdout to extend io.TextIOBase
• sublime.executable_path(), sublime.packages_path(), sublime.installed_packages_path() and sublime.cache_path() may now be called at import time
• Added sublime.SymbolRegion and sublime.SymbolLocation with corresponding methods on View and Window
• Fix a bug with popup being stuck open when a popup is shown in the hide event handler of another popup
• Added open_project_or_workspace command
• append command has new, optional disable_tab_translation argument
• Added modifier_keys to event dicts when commands are invoked via a menu
• Added sublime.DYNAMIC_COMPLETIONS. on_query_completions() can return this flag to indicate that completion results should be re-queried as the user types
• Added sublime.INHIBIT_REORDER. Returned by on_query_competions()
• CompletionItem now accepts a details parameter, which can include basic HTML
• CommandInputHandler now has an initial_selection() method
• Added Region.to_tuple and Phantom.to_tuple
• Fixed ViewEventListener.on_load_async() sometimes not being called
• Added sublime.QuickPanelItem() with support for kind info, annotations and basic minihtml
• Plugins may now add selections to the Jump Back history list via the add_jump_record command
• Plugins may suppress selections from the Jump Back history list via the jump_ignore_selection region
• Plugins may now disable the default HTML and CSS completions
• Added Buffer.id() and Buffer.file_name()
• The TextInputHandler and ListInputHandler classes may define a method want_event() that returns True to receive an extra parameter, an event dict, when the validate() and confirm() methods are called. The dict will contain the key modifier_keys, which will be a dict that may contain zero or more of the keys: primary, ctrl, super, alt, altgr
• Add sublime.ui_info() for high-level information about the UI
• Popups will be properly positioned when displayed near the right-hand side of the editor
• Popups near the right-hand side of the editor with wrapped lines will now be properly sized
• Added ListInputItem so that ListInputHandler objects can provide kind info, annotations and details
• Improvements to the API, applied to the new Python 3.8 environment only:
  • bool(sublime.Selection()) will return False when len() == 0
  • sublime.load_binary_resource() now returns bytes instead of bytearray
  • Added Selection.__iter__()
  • Added Region.__iter__()
  • Added Region.__contains__()
  • Added Settings.to_dict()
  • Settings can now be treated like a dict
  • Plugins starting with _ will be ignored, __all__ global will be respected
  • Events won't be reported until plugin_loaded() has been called
  • .pyc files can now be imported when contained within .sublime-package files, although they will not be scanned for plugins
• The certifi Python package is preinstalled
• Significant performance improvements when rapidly printing to the Console
• Added sublime.log_control_tree(). When enabled, clicking with ctrl+alt will log the control tree under the mouse to the console
• Added sublime.log_fps(). When enabled, the render times are tracked and logged
• Added logging status functions:
  • sublime.get_log_commands()
  • sublime.get_log_input()
  • sublime.get_log_build_systems()
  • sublime.get_log_result_regex()
  • sublime.get_log_indexing()
  • sublime.get_log_fps()
  • sublime.get_log_control_tree()
• Logging functions are now toggle when no argument is passed:
  • sublime.log_commands()
  • sublime.log_input()
  • sublime.log_build_systems()
  • sublime.log_result_regex()
  • sublime.log_indexing()
  • sublime.log_fps()
  • sublime.log_control_tree()
• Backwards Compatibility Break: The event parameter passed to commands when a minihtml link is clicked changed from a two-element list to a dict with the keys x and y