Skip to content

Getting started

A quick tour of the interface and the basics of working with files.

System requirements

Platform Package Minimum version
macOS Apple Silicon (arm64) macOS 14.4 Sonoma
Windows x64 Windows 10, version 1809 (build 17763)

macOS builds are Apple Silicon only — every Mac with an M-series chip is supported. Intel Macs are not served.

On Windows, OctoEdit additionally requires the Microsoft Visual C++ 2015–2022 Redistributable (x64) — on most systems it is already installed.

Which macOS download to take

macOS is published as two packages that differ in one thing only — the HTML preview:

Download What you get
OctoEdit with the HTML preview The full editor, including the live preview of HTML and PHP documents rendered by a real browser engine. A considerably larger download.
OctoEdit The same editor without that preview, and without the browser engine behind it.

Everything else is identical. There is nothing to add to a package after installing it, so pick the one you want up front; to change your mind, simply download the other package and replace the application — your preferences and saved session live outside it and are kept.

Opening files

Use File ▸ Open, drag a file onto the window, or pass paths on the command line. Each file opens in its own tab.

Drag & drop and administrator mode (Windows)

Windows refuses drops from Explorer into a program running elevated (as administrator): the cursor shows the "not allowed" sign and nothing opens. This is a security rule of the operating system, not something the editor can override — run OctoEdit normally and drag & drop works.

The interface

  • Tab bar — one tab per open document; drag to reorder or to move a tab into another split group.
  • Editor area — the Scintilla-based editing surface, with syntax colouring, code folding, and (optionally) a minimap.
  • Status bar — transient information such as cursor position and short-lived notifications.
  • Dock panels — side panels contributed by features and plugins (for example, Document statistics).

Editing

The Edit menu holds the usual clipboard commands — Cut (Ctrl+X), Copy (Ctrl+C), Paste (Ctrl+V) and Select All (Ctrl+A).

Paste as Markdown (Ctrl+Shift+V, ⇧⌘V on macOS; also in the editor's right-click menu) is for text copied from a rich source — a chat message, a word-processor document, a web page. Such a copy carries two versions: the plain text, in which a bulleted list has lost its bullets and its nesting, and the formatted one. Paste inserts the plain text. Paste as Markdown reads the formatted version instead and inserts it as Markdown: nested lists with - and real numbers, headings, bold and italic, links, tables and code blocks, one line per item, nothing wrapped. When the clipboard holds plain text only, it does exactly what Paste does.

Cut Line (Shift+Delete) is the one worth knowing about:

  • with something selected it cuts the selection, exactly like Ctrl+X;
  • with nothing selected it cuts the whole line the cursor is on, its line break included.

It is the logical line that goes, not one wrapped row: a long line shown over three rows is still one line and is cut as a whole. The text lands on the clipboard either way, so it can be pasted back or moved elsewhere, and one Ctrl+Z undoes it.

All of these can be rebound in the Shortcut Mapper.

Commands that need a document to work on are greyed out when there isn't one. A tab that isn't a text document — a comparison, a log view — leaves the editing commands unavailable, and so does a document you can only read, such as a file opened in Monitoring mode or a window started with --viewer. This applies to the menus, the Command Palette and the keyboard shortcuts alike, so a command that would do nothing is never offered as if it would.

Saving

File ▸ Save (Ctrl+S) writes the active document; Save As (Ctrl+Alt+S, ⇧⌘S on macOS) lets you pick a new name or location. Save All (Ctrl+Shift+S, ⌥⌘S on macOS) writes every modified document across all split panes. Close (Ctrl+W) closes the active document and Close All (Ctrl+Shift+W, ⇧⌘W on macOS) closes every tab in every pane, asking about unsaved changes first. Print… prints the active document (no default shortcut — Ctrl+P is Go to File) — see Printing.

Typing national characters on Windows

Windows reports the right Alt key (AltGr) as Ctrl+Alt. OctoEdit tells the two apart: AltGr keeps typing your layout's characters (ś, ł, €, µ …) even on a key that also carries a Ctrl+Alt shortcut, while the same chord from the left Ctrl+Alt keys runs the command.

Documents that already have a file name are written straight away; for each document that has never been saved, OctoEdit brings it to the front and opens a Save As dialog so you can see what you are naming. Cancelling one of those dialogs skips only that document — the rest are still saved. Unsaved buffers can also be persisted between sessions — see the Session plugin.

Saving is atomic: the new content is written beside the file and then put in its place in one step, so an interrupted save — a full disk, a disconnected network share, a power cut — can never leave a half-written file behind.

Next steps