Date:Posted By:Category:Software and Coding

Sublime Text 3 auto-upgraded to Sublime Text 4 on my laptop on May 20, 2021

There are a ton of awesome new features in Sublime Text 4, but I’ve also found a few things that I want to change and a few minor issues that I’m sure they’re working on (e.g., I submitted this ticket for typing feeling slow when the same file is open on multiple monitors https://github.com/sublimehq/sublime_text/issues/4369)

Inactive Pane Dimming is the official feature name but the setting name is “Inactive Sheet Dimming“, but you may also call it “inactive tab dimming” or search for “sublime text 4 tab highlighting” or “sublime text 4 file tab highlighting” like I did.

Inactive Pane Dimming is when you have 2 or more tabs open side-by-side, and when you click on one, it dims the other ones.

Method 1: Disable Inactive Pane/Sheet Dimming

You can disable Inactive Pane Dimming by the following steps:

  1. Click “Preferences” > “Settings”
  2. On the right, add the following to your settings:
"inactive_sheet_dimming": false,

This should appear within the settings curly braces, so for example mine looks like this:

{
  "tab_size": 2,
  "theme": "Default.sublime-theme",
  "translate_tabs_to_spaces": true,
  "inactive_sheet_dimming": false,
}

Voila! You may need to restart Sublime Text 4.

Method 2: Change file tabs back to Sublime Text 3 angled appearance

Alternatively, you can disable it implicitly by changing the file tabs back to their sublime text 3 appearance, and this will disable the dimming between tabs as well.

  1. Click “Preferences” > “Settings”
  2. On the right, add the following to your settings:
"file_tab_style": "angled",

This should appear within the settings curly braces, so for example mine looks like this:

{
  "tab_size": 2,
  "theme": "Default.sublime-theme",
  "translate_tabs_to_spaces": true,
  "file_tab_style": "angled",
}

Voila! You may need to restart Sublime Text 4.