Open Sublime Text 2 with New Tab Instead of New Window – How to

bashmacossublime-text-2

I've got an alias to open files in Sublime Text 2:

alias sub='/Applications/Sublime\ Text\ 2.app/Contents/MacOS/Sublime\ Text\ 2'

But this spins up another instance of Sublime Text 2 (complete with restoring all the open files and folders in my other instance).

I would like to get files to open up as a tab in the current instance, which must be possible, since this is what right-click > Open with… > Sublime Text 2 does.

Any idea how to do that from the command line?

Best Answer

The reason it doesn't work is that you have the wrong alias. Here's the correct one for Sublime Text 3:

alias subl='/Applications/Sublime\ Text.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl'

This is an alias that Sublime Text specifically provides for macOS. It will not block execution and—by default—open files in a tab next to the ones that are already open.

If you want to know more about why your alias didn't work, read on.

Application packages in OS X have an .app suffix, but when launched, they actually launch a binary that's specified in Info.plist in said package. This is the binary your alias links to, in the MacOS folder.

Running an application from the GUI or through Launch Services (e.g. via osascript or open) makes OS X open that binary, but at the same time ensure it's only launching one instance of that app. When you call the binary directly, you bypass this restriction and launch another instance of the application—unless the application has measures for preventing two instances from being launched, which normally OS X handles.

Also, as a side effect, launching the binary will block the terminal execution until you exit the program or suspend it to the background. Using the built-in subl from Sublime Text returns control to your terminal, as it actually uses a Launch Services call to open the Sublime package instead of addressing the binary in MacOS only.

Since you're basically launching a second Sublime Text instance, it'll show you the files it previously had opened, because that's its default behavior.

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