How do I make Sublime Text 3 the default text editor

These instructions assume that you have installed Sublime Text 3 using the .deb file provided for Ubuntu. If you downloaded the tarball and installed it manually, you will need to change the paths below to your install location.

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First, make sure that /usr/share/applications/sublime_text.desktop exists (sublime-text.desktop on some systems):

ls /usr/share/applications/sublime_text.desktop

Then, open /usr/share/applications/defaults.list with Sublime:

subl /usr/share/applications/defaults.list

Search for all instances of gedit and replace them with sublime_text. Save the file, log out and back in, and you should be all set.

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If for some reason /usr/share/applications/sublime_text.desktop (or sublime-text.desktop) doesn't exist, create it:

sudo touch /usr/share/applications/sublime_text.desktop

Open it in Sublime:

subl /usr/share/applications/sublime_text.desktop

and paste the following into it:

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Name=Sublime Text
GenericName=Text Editor
Comment=Sophisticated text editor for code, markup and prose
Exec=/opt/sublime_text/sublime_text %F
Terminal=false
MimeType=text/plain;
Icon=sublime-text
Categories=TextEditor;Development;
StartupNotify=true
Actions=Window;Document;

[Desktop Action Window]
Name=New Window
Exec=/opt/sublime_text/sublime_text -n
OnlyShowIn=Unity;

[Desktop Action Document]
Name=New File
Exec=/opt/sublime_text/sublime_text --command new_file
OnlyShowIn=Unity;

However, if you installed Sublime Text using the .deb file downloaded from sublimetext.com, the file should already exist.