21

How do you change the tab spacing for TextEdit? The default is too big (8 spaces, I think).

I'm using OS X Mavericks.

slhck
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Zach Smith
  • 346

3 Answers3

37

For plaintext tabs, you don't need to replace the entire TextEdit app to change it. I looked at the source they changed and it provides the simpler answer: Open the Terminal and type

defaults write com.apple.TextEdit "TabWidth" '4'

Where '4' is the number of spaces a tab should be.

liquidblueocean
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1

UPDATE APRIL 2015: This Textedit has stopped working for me. All windows are invisible.

A kindly soul has slightly modified TextEdit to add a field, "Tab Width", at the bottom of the "New Document" tab of the "Preferences" window.

Type in a number between 1 and 100 (inclusive) and it will change the width of tabs to that number (in character widths).

Download at code.google.com.

Since I couldn't replace the main TextEdit app, I renamed the modified one TextEditT.app.

[update] A better solution is to right click on both the old and new versions and select "show package contents". You can then replace the contents of the existing app with the contents of the tab-friendly app.

Andrew Swift
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0

TextEdit bases its tabs on distances, not number of characters.

If I set the text to 30pt, the tabs are four spaces. At 14pt, they are eight spaces.

Consequently, there is no set "number of spaces" that could ever be modified.

One solution is to:

  1. change your font preferences for RTF files to match my TXT preferences.

  2. temporarily convert your TXT files to RTF while editing (cmd-shift-T).

(do some editing)

  1. convert back to TXT when you quit (cmd-shift-T).

The RTF tabs default to 4 spaces for me -- it depends on the font and size.

Andrew Swift
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