General preferences

The General preferences control various overall behaviors of CotEditor.

On startup
You can set the CotEditor's behavior on launch.
Reopen windows from last session
With this option turned on, CotEditor automatically opens the documents that was opened when quitting last time on launch.
When nothing else is open
Set the behavior when you launch (or relaunch) CotEditor and you had no window already open.
Create a New Document
Create a new blank document.
Show Open Dialog
Show the open dialog to select a document to open.
No Action
Just activate the application and do nothing.
Document save
You can set the way to make document backup.
Enable Auto Save with Versions
With this option turned on, document automatically saves changes to your file constantly while editing. This option also enables Versions, the modern system feature allowing you to go back to previous versions, as well as modifying document name or location from the window title bar.
Even if it turned off, CotEditor creates backup covertly for unexpected crash.
Trim trailing whitespace on save
With this option turned on, whitespaces at the end of lines are removed automatically every time when document will be saved.
Including whitespace-only lines
With this option turned on, trimming ation removes all whitespaces in whitespace-only lines
When document is modified by another application:
You can set the behavior when the document file was updated by another application while it is opened in CotEditor.
Keep CotEditor's edition
Do nothing and keep CotEditor's edition. CotEditor may ask whether overwrite the file that was modified by another application first when user saves the document.
Ask how to resolve
Display a dialog when the file was modified by another application so that user can choose between to keep CotEditor's edition or to revert to the latest file.
Update to modified edition
Update editor's text to the latest version silently when the file was modified by another application. Take notice that the undo history will also be cleared after updating.
Content parse
You can set the behavior on parsing document content.
Ignore line endings when counting characters
With this option turned on, the character count displayed in the document inspector and the status bar excludes line endings.
Link URL in document
With this option turned on, automatically link to the URL found in the document.
Check spelling while typing
This option allows you to automatically check your spelling as you type.
Highlight matching braces “( )” “[ ]” “{ }”
With this option turned on, CotEditor briefly highlights the corresponding opening brace when you write a closing brace.
Highlight "< >"
If this is on, highlighting will apply to angle brackets “< >” as well.
Highlight instances of selected text
With this option turned on, all the occurrences of the selection in the editor are highlighted if the selected text is an entire word.
Delay
Set time delay to highlight instances after selecting text.
Software Update (only on non-AppStore ver.)
You can set software updater behavior.
Check for updates automatically
With this option turned on, CotEditor checks the existence of the new version via internet automatically on launch. Then if the new one has been released, CotEditor notifies the information on a panel.
Include pre-releases
With this option turned on, the updater also check about release of pre-release versions (beta versions). Take notice that they could be unstable.

See also