Overview

Sublime Text 4, Build 4200 was released on May 21, 2025 by Sublime HQ. This release introduces a number of new features, UI improvements, and important announcements regarding future plugin architecture changes. The most notable changes include the ability to place the sidebar on the right, new built-in syntax highlighting for TOML and Zsh, interactive build system input, and significant multi-cursor performance improvements.

Additionally, Sublime HQ announced a roadmap for phasing out Python 3.3 plugin host support and upgrading the embedded Python runtime from 3.8 to 3.13 in the next development cycle.

New Features

Sidebar on the Right

A long-requested feature has finally arrived: users can now move the sidebar to the right-hand side of the editor window using the new "sidebar_on_right": true setting. This is a simple configuration change that will make many developers who prefer right-aligned navigation very happy.

TOML and Zsh Syntax Highlighting

Sublime Text now ships with built-in syntax highlighting for TOML configuration files and Zsh shell scripts. Both syntaxes were contributed by community member deathaxe and eliminate the need for third-party packages for these increasingly popular formats.

Interactive Build System Input

Build systems can now be configured with "interactive": true, which provides an input box that allows developers to pass runtime input directly to their build processes. This is particularly useful for build scripts that require user prompts or interactive configuration.

Multi-Cursor Performance Improvement

Multi-cursor editing has been dramatically optimized. While previously having many cursors would slow the editor significantly, the new implementation remains usable even with over one hundred thousand cursors simultaneously. This is a massive improvement for large-scale refactoring operations.

Breaking Changes and Deprecations

Python 3.3 Plugin Host Phase-Out

Sublime HQ announced that Python 3.3 support will be phased out over the course of a year, being removed entirely after Q1 2026. This release adds the "disable_plugin_host_3.3" setting, which forces all plugins to run under Python 3.8. This gives plugin authors time to migrate their code before the older runtime is removed.

Python 3.8 to 3.13 Upgrade

The embedded Python runtime will be upgraded from 3.8 to 3.13 in the next development cycle. This upgrade will roll out slowly through a beta program to ensure a smooth transition for plugin authors. As a consequence, support for older operating systems will also be deprecated — the minimum macOS version will increase from 10.9 to 10.13, and Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 support will end.

Additional Improvements

• Rewritten syntax highlighting for SQL, ActionScript, Diff, Bash, and Graphviz
• Improved git status performance
• Improved behavior of copy/cut with multiple empty selections
• Tab translation is now disabled when reading from stdin
• Improved handling of saving files in non-existent directories
• New setting: "default_font_size"
• New setting: "reload_file_in_background"
• New setting: "set_unsaved_view_name_for_syntax"
• Allow variable expansion in a syntax's first_line_match regex
• API: Added Window.create_io_panel and Window.find_io_panel
• API: Added Selection.has_empty_region, Selection.has_non_empty_region and Selection.has_multiple_non_empty_regions

Fixes

• Fixed wrap_lines command not understanding newer ruler settings
• Fixed bookmarks not toggling at EOF
• Fixed an issue with click event handling on the scroll bar
• Fixed build system errors not having the correct PATH
• Fixed index crawler leaking shared memory in special cases
• Fixed local transformed symbols having the wrong region
• Fixed find_under_expand edge case
• Fixed uneven indent guide rendering with fractional DPI scaling
• Fixed certain minimap settings incorrectly affecting text rendering

Source: Official Sublime HQ Blog