“Unexpected trailing character” in sublime when trying to edit preferences

Question

I'm trying to change my sublime theme/colour scheme and i get 'unexpected trailing characters'

When I try to save the /User/Preferences.sublime-settings with this config

{
    "theme": "Afterglow-green.sublime-theme",
    "color_scheme": "Packages/Theme - Afterglow/Afterglow.tmTheme"
}

{
    "tabs_small": true
}

I can't work out why I would be getting that message?

Answer 1

Your settings files in Sublime (all of them) need to be valid JSON. Yours should be as follows:

{
    "theme": "Afterglow-green.sublime-theme",
    "color_scheme": "Packages/Theme - Afterglow/Afterglow.tmTheme",
    "tabs_small": true
}

Note that everything is enclosed in one (and only one) outer dictionary, denoted by curly braces {}. There should also be a comma , at the end of every key: value pair, except for the last line. If there is only one line, don't use a comma.

Just out of interest, what is the "tabs_small" setting for? It's not one of Sublime's default settings.

Answer 2

The selected answer is correct, however this prompt can also occur during application startup.

If this error occurs when you're starting Sublime, navigate to C:/Users/{Your User}/AppData/Roaming/Sublime Text 3/Packages/User and open Plain text.sublime-settings.

The issue with JSON can be resolved here.