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Using ubuntu 10.10 the editor in mc (midnight commander) is nano. How can i switch to the internal mc editor (mcedit)?

Isaiah
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sdu
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6 Answers6

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Press the following keys in order, one at a time:

  1. F9 or Alt + 9 Activates the top menu.
  2. o Selects the Option menu.
  3. c Opens the configuration dialog.
  4. i Toggles the use internal edit option.
  5. s Saves your preferences.

screenshot

Pablo Bianchi
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Isaiah
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    Can you also add how to change the editor to any other editor? – trusktr Nov 04 '12 at 20:34
  • It would be better to specify a way to change this from the command line, but not by changing the OS default editor. – sorin Apr 30 '13 at 08:10
  • This is great, but is there a way to do the same in the command line, say, by adding/changing an environment variable? I'd like to automate this. – Nickolai Leschov Apr 05 '14 at 17:34
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    Looks it has changed to 't' instead of 'i' [image](http://imgur.com/rQi0rrm) – pshirishreddy Feb 15 '16 at 05:43
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    @trusktr to change to other editor you need to uncheck the option and [set the `EDITOR` environment variable](https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/80852/209677), easily with [`select-editor`](https://askubuntu.com/a/486205/349837) – Pablo Bianchi May 20 '20 at 02:46
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Run MC as usual. On the command line right above the bottom row of menu selections type select-editor. This should open a menu with a list of all of your installed editors. This is working for me on all my current linux machines.

Nux
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Hurnst
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  • Thank you! That was the only solution that worked for me with the mc version in the Ubuntu 14.04 repositories. – Sledge Hammer Aug 09 '15 at 11:57
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    Doesn't work for me. I get a "Command not found" error from Bash. – marlar Mar 17 '16 at 08:50
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    This solution is useful in Ubuntu (not tested in Debian) but in Redhat or Centos you need to do something like this blog [rhel-centos-set-default-editor-to-nano](http://rizwanansari.net/rhel-centos-set-default-editor-to-nano/) – hermeslm Aug 09 '19 at 15:09
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    @hermeslm, Thank you ^_^ – Sam Sirry May 08 '22 at 02:16
  • +1 as this works in Debian 11 as well *and* allows one to change the editor to eg nano after mcedit was selected, as Debian activates mcedit as an external editor so changing it becomes impossible with the menu-based solution given by Isaiah. – fvu Mar 02 '23 at 11:34
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You can also change the standard editor system-wide. Open a terminal and type this command:

sudo update-alternatives --config editor

You will get a list of the installed editors on your system, and you can choose your favorite.

Pablo Bianchi
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    OP is not asking how to change the system default editor. – Ryan C. Thompson Dec 09 '10 at 18:33
  • @RyanC.Thompson yes, but changing the default system editor would also change the default external MC editor, thus answering the OP's question. It's still a valid answer. – spamove Jul 13 '23 at 15:41
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If you want to leave mc and system settings as it is now, you may just run it like

$ EDITOR=mcedit mc
AntonioK
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In user's home folder (/home/<user-name>/) there should be a file named .selected_editor. One can edit it and change it there to a desired editor.

# Generated by /usr/bin/select-editor
SELECTED_EDITOR="/path/to/mcedit"

Or remove this file to force MC to ask about default editor on first edit.

qba-dev
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Open Midnight Commander, go to Options -> Configuration and check "use internal editor" Hit save and you are done.

PengiunPillup
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