Change General preferences

In the CotEditor app on your Mac, use General preferences to choose how to handle documents, saving, and more. To change these preferences, choose CotEditor > Preferences, then click General.

OptionDescription
Reopen windows from last session On starting up, automatically opens the documents that was opened when quitting last time.
When nothing else is open To change the behavior when you launch CotEditor and you had no window already open, click the pop-up menu, then choose an option:
  • 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.
Enable Auto Save with Versions Automatically save documents 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.
When document is modified by another application Choose 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.
Ignore line endings when counting characters Exclude line endings when counting characters to display in the document inspector and status bar.
Link URL in document Highlight and make clickable the URLs found in the document.
Check spelling while typing Automatically check your spelling as you type.
Highlight matching braces “()” “[]” “{}” Briefly highlight the corresponding brace when the cursor moved through a part of paired braces.
Highlight “<>” Apply paired brace highlight also to angle brackets.
Highlight instances of selected text Highlight all the occurrences of the selection in the editor with a time delay after selecting text. The highlight will be performed only when the selected text is consists of entire words.
Command-line tool This section shows the installation status of the cot command-line tool. See cot command for details.
Software Update (only on non-AppStore ver.)
OptionDescription
Check for updates automatically Check the existence of a new version via internet automatically on launch. Then if a new one has been released, CotEditor notifies the information on a panel.
Include pre-releases Notify also about releases of pre-release versions (beta versions). Take notice that pre-release versions can be unstable.

See also