The first stable release of Sublime Text 4 is now available to download.
Sublime Text 4 packs in a wealth of workflow improvements, user interface tweaks, and even a few new platform capabilities, including dark mode auto detection, side-by-side document viewing, and GPU acceleration.
This release is also the first to offer support for 64-bit ARM Linux and Apple’s M1 processors.
“We’ve worked hard on providing improvements without losing focus on what makes Sublime Text great. There are some new major features that we hope will significantly improve your workflow and a countless number of minor improvements across the board,” the team behind the app say of its release.
An overview of the key changes follows, but you can skip to the download section to find out how to install Sublime Text 4 on Ubuntu so you can try it out.
Sublime Text 4’s New Features
Sublime Text 4’s headline feature is, for me, the ability to see two tabs’ files side-by-side via the tab multi-select features added to the UI.
For example, you can hit ctrl and click on any two open tabs in the tab strip, or two project files in the sidebar and instantly see them side-by-side, for easy comparison.
Sublime Text’s auto-complete powers haven’t been as polished as other editors, which is something this release corrects.
The editor’s auto-complete engine was rewritten to support context-aware autocomplete suggestions based on the existing code within your project.
The syntax highlighting engine uses less memory to do more in Sublime Text 4. New features include non-deterministic grammars, multi-line constructs, and syntax inheritance.
Default and Adaptive themes in this version have new tab styles, inactive pane dimming, dark mode auto detection (where available), and on Linux and Windows, custom title bars.
Linux specific improvements? There’s a few, including text drag and drop; Wayland support; touchscreen interact; and being able to copy/paste to/from apps that don’t support UTF8 text. The app also adopts vsync for animations, having previously used a fixed 60hz.
Sublime Text 4 changes at-a-glance:
- Tab multi-select through the UI
- Context-aware autocomplete
- TypeScript, JSX and TSX Support
- GPU acceleration
- Improved themes
- Custom title bars on Linux and Windows
- Python 3.8
A quick note: while GPU acceleration is included in Sublime Text 4 it is only enabled by default on Windows.
To enable GPU acceleration in Sublime Text 4 on Linux, change the hardware_acceleration value in the editor’s Settings configuration file to opengl, then restart the app. After that, GPU acceleration will be enabled on Linux.
Download Sublime Text 4
You can download the latest release from the Sublime Text download page, with installers provided for Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Sublime Text 4 now works with Apple’s M1 processors, and 64-bit ARM Linux builds (including Raspberry Pi, PineBook Pro, etc). It drops compatibility with Windows XP and Windows Vista, and versions of macOS prior to OS X 10.9 Mavericks.
Ubuntu users may prefer to use the official Sublime Text APT repo, which we covered setting up in our how to install Sublime Text on Ubuntu guide. This makes it easier to install the editor and keep it updated.
Is Sublime Text free to use?
Sublime Text 4 is cross-platform, closed-source software available for Windows, macOS and Linux.
And although it is free to download and use Sublime Text on all platforms you are supposed to buy a license if you want to use it full-time. Why emphasis on ‘supposed’? Well, the Sublime Text evaluation period is not time limited, and there are no feature restrictions.
You can just use it for free, forever — that won’t pay the developers to keep working on it, of course.
Starting with this release Sublime Text license keys — which cost $80 — are no longer linked to a single version but now valid for all versions released within 3 years of purchase.
After this period users can continue using existing/older builds with your license key, but will need to buy a new license to use versions released outside of the original purchase window.
Sublime Text not for you? A wealth of free Sublime Text alternatives exist, many open source and available natively on Linux, with Atom, VSCode, Gedit, and Vim all especially popular. Share your preferred editor down in the comments.