Change the default editor for files opened in the terminal? (e.g. set it to TextEdit/Coda/Textmate)

Question

Is there a way to make files opened for editing in the terminal open in Textedit instead?

For example, where a command might open a file for editing (like git commit), instead of opening that file in vim or emacs, it would open in Textedit (or perhaps another text editing application of your choosing, such as Coda or Sublime).

And as a bonus question, is there any way to specifically configure git to automatically open the file created after running git commit in an editor from the applications directory?

Answer 1

Most programs will check the $EDITOR environment variable, so you can set that to the path of TextEdit in your bashrc. Git will use this as well.

How to do this:

• Add the following to your ~/.bashrc file:
  export EDITOR="/Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit"
• or just type the following command into your Terminal:
  echo "export EDITOR=\"/Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit\"" >> ~/.bashrc

If you are using zsh, use ~/.zshrc instead of ~/.bashrc.

Answer 2

Use git config --global core.editor mate -w or git config --global core.editor open as @dmckee suggests in the comments.

Reference: http://git-scm.com/docs/git-config

Answer 3

For OS X and Sublime Text

Make subl available.

Put this in ~/.bash_profile

[[ -s ~/.bashrc ]] && source ~/.bashrc

Put this in ~/.bashrc

export EDITOR=subl

Answer 4

Set your editor to point to this program:

/Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit

With SVN, you should set SVN_EDITOR environment variable to:

$ export SVN_EDITOR=/Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit

And then, when you try committing something, TextEdit will launch.

Answer 5

For anyone coming here in 2018:

• go to iTerm -> Preferences -> Profiles -> Advanced -> Semantic History
• from the dropdown, choose Open with Editor and from the right dropdown choose your editor of choice

Answer 6

For Sublime Text 3:

defaults write com.apple.LaunchServices LSHandlers -array-add '{LSHandlerContentType=public.plain-text;LSHandlerRoleAll=com.sublimetext.3;}'

See Set TextMate as the default text editor on Mac OS X for details.