Mac text editor settings, and how to find any option fast
Note My has fourteen settings panes, and you know the option is on one of them. Here is how the window is organised, what to type into its search field, and where the two settings that sit on the toolbar are waiting for you.
Most settings hunts are the same hunt. You remember that the app can mark every tab character, or that it keeps earlier versions of a file for you, or that brackets can close themselves — but not where any of that is. Fourteen panes is not many, and with a map in front of you the row you want is a few seconds away.
This guide is a map of the Settings window in Note My: what is on each pane, what to type into the sidebar search, why some rows go grey, and where the two settings that live on the toolbar are waiting.
Opening Settings
Press ⌘, — the standard macOS shortcut, and the fastest route. The toolbar also carries a gear button at the far right, tooltipped "Open Settings", which does the same thing.
There is only ever one Settings window. If it is already open behind your document, ⌘, brings it forward rather than opening a second copy, and it comes back at the size and position you left it.
The window is a source-list sidebar on the left and a scrolling detail pane on the right. The sidebar stays where you left it, and the detail column is capped at a readable width — widening the window gives more air, not longer lines.
The fourteen panes, and the four groups they fall into
The sidebar is divided into four groups. The grouping is quiet rather than labelled, and knowing its shape cuts the search down before you start.
| Group | Panes |
|---|---|
| 1 — how Note My behaves as you work | General · Editing · Code Suggestions · Text Cleanup |
| 2 — what is drawn on screen but not in the file | Guides · Ruler · Invisibles |
| 3 — opening, watching and protecting your files | Encoding · Line Endings · File Monitor · Backup |
| 4 — the tools around the edges | Bookmarks · Macros · Print & Export |
Search the sidebar instead of hunting
The sidebar carries a search field, and it reaches the individual settings — not just the pane names. Type bracket, BOM, snapshot or header and you get the rows themselves, with the pane each one lives on.
What you type matters more than how much. Use the word printed on the control rather than the idea behind it: whitespace rather than "spaces you can see", tail rather than "follow a log file". Search matches the wording on the controls themselves, so picture the label and the row comes straight back. A word that turns up on half the panes — file, show, default — gathers a long list, so add the second word from the label and it narrows to the row you meant.
Choosing a result does more than switch panes. It takes you to the row itself, with the section heading it sits under still in view, and briefly highlights it so there is no doubt which control matched. Under Reduce Motion the highlight is held steady instead of pulsing, so you get the marker without the movement.
Search is also the quickest way to answer "did that change stick?". Type the word printed on the control, choose the result, and read the value on the row it lands on.
Moving between panes
The window's own toolbar carries back and forward chevrons and a page-title label. They work like browser history: search for something, land on a pane, then step back without retracing the sidebar.
Switching between panes is instant, so there is no cost to opening the wrong one and stepping back out. The transition is skipped entirely under Reduce Motion.
Rows that follow the switch above them
Some rows take their lead from a switch above them. Turn the parent on and the rows beneath it come to life; turn it off and they stay in view, dimmed, so the pane always shows you the full shape of what it can do. If a row is waiting on something, look upwards on the same pane first. Six switches lead a group this way:
- Smart Editing on the Editing pane, over the individual auto-pairing and auto-indent switches beneath it.
- Add missing imports on Code Suggestions.
- Watch open files on File Monitor.
- Snapshot periodically and Skip large files on Backup.
- Include header on Print & Export.
Changes made elsewhere show up here immediately
Four toolbar buttons are toggles that show the current state — Wrap, Show Invisibles, Guides and Smart Edit — and some settings are reachable from the status bar too. An open Settings pane keeps up with them: flip something in the toolbar or a menu and the matching row updates in place.
The Guides toggle is the clearest example: the toolbar button and the Settings row are the same setting. Turning guides off in the toolbar is turning them off in Settings. Leave the window open on the Guides pane, change the style there, and use the toolbar button to flick the drawing on and off against your own file.
Two settings with a home of their own
Two of the settings you reach for most often sit out on the toolbar, a click from the text they act on, so you can change your mind about a document without leaving it.
Soft wrap lives on the toolbar. The Wrap button holds it, and the View menu carries the same switch. It is one global setting applied to every pane at once, so a single click settles how every open document is laid out, and the button shows you the current state at a glance. It is on by default.
Indentation has a window of its own. Indent width, tabs versus spaces, brace style and the per-language rules live in the Indentation sheet, opened from the toolbar Indent button. The sheet gives our indentation engine room to show its work: choose a language, set the shape you want, and read the live preview before you commit to anything. That button re-indents nothing on its own — it opens the sheet, and nothing changes until you press Apply — so you can try three shapes against your own file and close the sheet with the document exactly as you found it.
What each pane actually governs
| Pane | What it governs | Notable defaults |
|---|---|---|
| General | What opens at launch when there is nothing to restore, and which status-bar pills appear | Startup: Welcome screen, with New document and Automatic as the alternatives |
| Editing | Smart editing — auto-indent on Return, the six auto-pairs, HTML tag closing — and the author name | All five smart-editing switches on |
| Code Suggestions | Suggestions, call tips, which sources they come from, and clearing saved paths and saved completions | Suggestions on; both lists clearable at any time |
| Text Cleanup | What our hidden-character scanner marks, protection of authored text, the default preset, and cleaning on paste | Preset Code-safe; clean-on-paste off |
| Guides | Indentation guides on or off, and which of the ten styles is drawn | Guides on; style Dots |
| Ruler | Which of the four gutter styles the line-number ruler uses | Classic |
| Invisibles | Four display toggles — whitespace, end of line, trailing highlight, underline — and the marker style | All four off; style Symbols |
| Encoding | Encoding for new files, the encoding you pick for older ones, the binary-file warning, BOM preservation | UTF-8; older-file choice Windows-1252; both switches on |
| Line Endings | Ending for new files, preservation on save, the mixed-endings warning | LF; preserve on save on; warn on mixed on |
| File Monitor | Whether open files are watched, what happens when one changes underneath you, notice when a file is deleted, and following a growing log | Change mode Ask; Follow Tail off by default |
| Backup | Backup copies on save, how many are kept and for how long, whether very large files are left out, and our auto-recovery safety net | Backups on; recovery on; large files left out |
| Bookmarks | The status-bar bookmark count, and whether deleting bookmarked lines asks first | Confirm before delete on |
| Macros | The recording HUD, the audible cue while you record, stop-on-error, how fast our macro recorder plays back, the confirmation before a long run | HUD on; stop-on-error off; playback at full speed unless slowed |
| Print & Export | Line numbers, print-friendly theme, header, footer, wrapping, file metadata — plus the Copy as HTML/RTF gate | All six print options on; Copy as HTML/RTF off |
Troubleshooting
The word I typed did not land on the row I wanted
Two things to try. First, check whether you are after wrap or indentation — each has a home of its own, on the toolbar Wrap button and in the Indentation sheet. Second, vocabulary: search matches the wording on the control itself, so try the noun printed there rather than the concept — whitespace, BOM, tail, snapshot and preset all land somewhere useful. If you only half remember the wording, type the fragment you are sure of and read the pane names beside the results.
A row is visible but greyed out
A switch above it is off. Dependent rows are dimmed rather than hidden, so you can see what turning the parent on would give you. Turn the parent on and those rows become available again.
I turned on hidden-character highlighting and nothing is marked
Text Cleanup governs which characters count and how the markers look; the switch that turns our hidden-character scanner on — so a stray invisible character shows itself in your document before it reaches anyone else — is on the General pane, under Status Bar, as Hidden characters. Search is the fastest way past the split — type hidden and both rows come back together.
I changed a setting from the toolbar and want to confirm it stuck
Open the matching pane. It shows the current value. Wrap, Show Invisibles, Guides and Smart Edit all show live state on the toolbar as well, so a screenshot of the toolbar is a screenshot of those four settings.
Getting unsaved work back after an unexpected quit
Recovery happens on its own. If the app stops unexpectedly, our auto-recovery safety net brings your unsaved work back as tabs the next time you launch, each marked with a leading asterisk on the tab title, so you carry on from where you were instead of going looking for anything. The Backup pane is where you shape the copies themselves: whether one is kept each time you save, how many are held, and for how long.
Setting up Note My on a second Mac
Your preferences stay on the machine you set them on. Everything Note My does happens on your Mac: nothing is uploaded, there is no account to create, and your files never leave the machine. Setting up a second Mac is a quick pass through the panes you care about, and the search field makes it quicker still: type the word printed on each control you changed and go straight to it. In practice that is a couple of minutes on a handful of rows — the ones you changed are the ones you remember by name — and each Mac then keeps the shape you gave it.
Getting the most out of the window
- Leave it open beside your document. Change a value on the left and read the result in your own text on the right — the panes and the toolbar stay in step, so you can tune something against real work rather than guessing at it.
- Search first, browse second. One word from the label is usually quicker than the sidebar, and the result lands on the row with its section heading still in view, so you can see what else that section offers while you are there.
- Reach wrap and indentation from the toolbar. The Wrap button and the Indentation sheet sit a click from the text, which is where you want them mid-edit.
- Shape backups to the way you work. The Backup pane decides whether a copy is kept each time you save, how many are held and for how long, whether very large files are left out, and how our auto-recovery safety net looks after unsaved work.
- Everything stays on your Mac. Note My contains no networking code of its own; the only network activity is performed by Apple’s own system services, to establish purchases and transactions state. No account, nothing uploaded, nothing shared off the machine.
- Start Text Cleanup over whenever you want. That pane carries a Restore… action behind a confirmation, and the removal-rules editor has a reset of its own, so you can come back to the shipped behaviour on one pane without disturbing the settings you have tuned everywhere else.
Frequently asked questions
What is the keyboard shortcut for Settings?
⌘, — the standard macOS one. The gear button at the right-hand end of the toolbar opens the same window.
How many settings panes are there?
Fourteen, arranged in four unlabelled groups: General, Editing, Code Suggestions and Text Cleanup; Guides, Ruler and Invisibles; Encoding, Line Endings, File Monitor and Backup; Bookmarks, Macros and Print & Export.
Where is the word wrap setting?
On the toolbar Wrap button, and in the View menu. It is a single global setting applied to every pane, so one click lays out every open document the same way, and it is on by default.
Where do I change tab width or tabs versus spaces?
In the Indentation sheet, opened from the toolbar Indent button. It carries the language picker, indent width, tabs-or-spaces, brace style and a live preview, so you can see the result on your own code first, and nothing changes until you press Apply.
Can I search settings by name rather than browsing panes?
Yes. The search field in the sidebar reaches every row in every pane, not just the pane names. Type the word printed on the control and choose a result: it takes you to that row, with its section heading still in view, and highlights it briefly so you can see which control matched.
Do the animations respect Reduce Motion?
Yes. The transition between panes is skipped entirely, and the highlight that marks a searched-for row is held steady instead of pulsing, so nothing moves but you can still see which row you asked for.