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On Windows most document editing applications have a Window/New window menu item to get more views on the same document.

Is it possible to do the same, somehow in gedit? It seems gedit is trying as hard as it can to avoid opening the same file twice.

NIMISHAN
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Calmarius
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5 Answers5

9

Run gedit from the commandline with the --new-window option:

gedit --new-window file

That will let you open a new gedit window on the same file. You'll get this warning which you can ignore:

This file "/path/to/file" is already open in another window.
Do you want to edit anyway? Edit AnywayDon't Edit

terdon
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8

Yes you can. Open gedit and your file, then right click the gedit icon on the launcher and open a new window. Now you can open the file again in the new window. Seems it won't let you do this by tabs though.

enter image description here

For those not using unity you can run

gedit --new-window

For a new window and then open your file, or

gedit --new-window path/to/file

To open a file directly.

Mark Kirby
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Yes you can

  1. open your file with gedit
  2. click the file name in the gedit tab so and drag it out like so.

enter image description here

This will create a new gedit window

enter image description here

now open the same file in the other gedit window

enter image description here

Then click Edit Anyway

Community
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Neil
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In case anybody still wonders, at least in Ubuntu 16.04 there is a workaround using also tabs as requested by the OP and with a read-only side (just replied here):

  1. Open the file in a first window.
  2. Go to Documents->New Tab Group (or press Ctrl+Alt+N). This will vertically split the window opening a new document as a tab on the right side.
  3. Open a second window and open again the same file (as suggested by @terdon: gedit --new-window file). It will tell you that the file is opened somewhere else and ask you if you want to edit the file anyway. My suggestion is to use "Don't Edit", otherwise you'll be overwriting your own changes from one window to the other. It's better to use one for writing an the other for reading/copying.
  4. The tricky points: Open a new tab in the second window, so now you can see tabs instead of only the document.
  5. The tricky points: Drag from the second window, the tab of your document and drop it as a tab in the right side of the original window.
  6. Now you can close the second window and remove the undesired tabs of the right side of the original window.
divagamundos
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Install gedit-plugins (in Ubuntu Software Center it is listed as an optional add-in for Gedit.) Then launch Gedit: Edit > Preferences > Plugins, enable Multi Edit, which enables editing a document in multiple places simultaneously.