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How can I change my default text editor from gedit to Emacs?

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It is answered here: askubuntu.com/questions/977538/… - basically you want to export EDITOR=emacs - and perhaps add that to your .bashrc so it becomes your default. – SDsolar Nov 17 '17 at 21:24
up vote 59 down vote accepted

The answer didn't work on 12.10. Here is what worked in my case:

  1. Right click on a text file.
  2. Choose "Properties" (not "Open With...")
  3. Click on the "Open With" tab.
  4. Choose your new text editor.
  5. Mark chosen text editor using a button "Set as default".

This also works on 12.04 and 13.04.

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It does not work on 13.04. After Step 3, I see a lot of choices, but not the editor I would like to have .... of course, the idea would be to use 'Add' ... but this is grayed out and can't be selected. Argh – Marius Hofert May 23 '13 at 15:24
1  
worked for me on 13.10 (replaced gedit with geany) – Alexander Malakhov Jan 29 '14 at 9:35
    
"Set as default" not showing on v 14 – atilkan Aug 31 '15 at 4:44
    
worked on 15.04 too ! – Kshitij Saraogi Oct 27 '15 at 9:48
2  
Also works on 17.04 – Jonas Dahlbæk Jul 25 '17 at 15:38
up vote 17 down vote

To change default text editor across the file types, try updating gnome-text-editor configuration. 

sudo update-alternatives --config gnome-text-editor

In some cases:

sudo update-alternatives --config editor
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up vote 11 down vote

Right click on a text file, point to "Open With" and it'll show other editors in a sub-menu. Click on "Other Application...". It'll show you a dialog with a list of applications, select Emacs and make sure the "Remember this application for "plain text document" file" option is checked. Click "Open".

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1  
I did try this, but I'm having a bit of a problem - whenever I double-click on a file in Nautilus, I get a dialog box that says: "Do you want to run "tasks.css", or display its contents? "tasks.css" is an executable text file." And then there are four options - Run in Terminal, Display, Cancel, Run. (This happens with every file, not just CSS files.) – begtognen Nov 16 '10 at 12:05
4  
@begtognen: Sorry for the ultra-late reply. But I've been trying to find a solution for this myself. Just found one - go to Nautlius preferences (Edit > Preferences), select the "Behavior" tab and under the "Executable Text Files" section, select the radio button "View executable text files when they are opened". Fixed the issue for me. – Mussnoon Nov 22 '10 at 23:28
    
YES! Worked beautifully. Thanks so much. – begtognen Nov 24 '10 at 23:16
    
I tried this also, but Emacs doesn't appear in the list of applications. Any thoughts? – MTS Apr 1 '14 at 19:44
    
No "Remember this application" there. When outdated you might want to either delete your answer, or clearly specify for what versions of Ubuntu it works. Thanks! :-) – Nicolas Raoul Nov 21 '16 at 2:52
up vote 9 down vote

A more robust solution would be to replace the bindings in /usr/share/applications/defaults.list. 

sed -i 's/gedit/emacs/' /usr/share/applications/defaults.list
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I don't know how, but by copying this command I accidentally cleared the whole file. I would much prefer doing this in a text editor using find-replace (as explained in this answer) for those who are not too familiar with sed. – metakermit Apr 5 '13 at 22:37
    
I did this (in a text editor with find-replace, which should have the same result), then logged out and back in but still C++ header files (*.h) are opened in gedit. – Stefan Monov Dec 14 '16 at 15:06
up vote 3 down vote 
sed -i 's/gedit/emacs/g' /etc/gnome/defaults.list
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up vote 2 down vote

If you are working from the terminal then I would add the following to your .bashrc file (or the config file for your favorite shell):

export EDITOR=emacs
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up vote 2 down vote

If you would like to replace gedit with any other text editor for all file types, the easiest is to edit the defaults.list file located here:

/usr/share/applications/defaults.list

Just find and replace all gedit.desktop references with your own editor (in this case emacs.desktop). You need root permissions to edit the file. So, just do: 

sudo -H gedit /usr/share/applications/defaults.list

Save the file, close it and it's done.

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up vote 0 down vote

I don't use a DE, but for my configurations the next command is the best:

/usr/bin/select-editor
  • it selects your default sensible-editor from all installed editors
  • must run with current user
  • you must have more than one editor in your system

Man pages select-editor

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up vote -2 down vote

To set Pluma as default text editor use this:

sudo sed -i 's|text/plain=gedit.desktop|text/plain=pluma.desktop|g' /etc/gnome/defaults.list

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