redopop / sublimedocumenttabs

Sublime Text key bindings for macOS document tabs.

Sublime Document Tabs

A Sublime Text 3 plugin for macOS users that provides keyboard shortcuts for navigating macOS document tabs within Sublime Text windows.

If you're unfamiliar, macOS document tabs can be used instead of windows when opening multiple Sublime Text projects:

(To switch from using multiple windows to using document tabs, navigate to the Dock section of your System Preferences and select "Prefer tabs when opening new documents: Always".)

The system-wide keyboard shortcuts for cycling through document tabs are ctrl+tab and ctrl+shift+tab, but these are overridden within Sublime Text. This plugin provides replacement Sublime Text key bindings for these shortcuts.

Accessibility access

Because it uses AppleScript to control the active document tab, this plugin requires Sublime text to be given Accessibility access to control your computer:

1. In System Preferences, navigate to Security & Privacy ▸ Privacy ▸ Accessibility
2. Click the plus (+) button under the list of apps allowed to control your computer, and add Sublime Text

Key bindings

Since its preferred key bindings override Sublime Text defaults, this plugin doesn't add any key bindings by default.

To add key bindings, go to Preferences ▸ Package Settings ▸ Document Tabs ▸ Example Key Bindings and copy the suggested key bindings to your personal key bindings file (Preferences ▸ Package Settings ▸ Document Tabs ▸ Key Bindings – User).

Remember that you can replace the suggested ctrl+tab/ctrl+shift+tab with whatever you prefer.

Personally, I prefer the consistency of the system-wide shortcut, so in my own keybindings I've moved Sublime Text's internal key bindings to option+tab/option+shift+tab and am using ctrl+tab/ctrl+shift+tab to cycle document tabs:

[
  { "keys": ["ctrl+tab"], "command": "document_tabs_next" },
  { "keys": ["ctrl+shift+tab"], "command": "document_tabs_prev" },

  { "keys": ["option+tab"], "command": "next_view_in_stack" },
  { "keys": ["option+shift+tab"], "command": "prev_view_in_stack" }
]

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Thanks to lunixbochs on the Sublime Text forum for the original suggestion.