How to customize the Replit editor

Click the gear icon on the left sidebar or search for Settings in the Tools search bar to open User Settings. Navigate to the Theme section. Replit offers several built-in themes including light and dark options. Select a theme to apply it immediately across the entire workspace including the editor, sidebar, and terminal panes. Your theme preference persists across all your projects and sessions. The web and desktop apps maintain separate preferences, so you may need to set the theme in both if you use both.

In User Settings, find the Font section. You can change the font size, which affects the code editor and terminal text. A larger font reduces eye strain on high-resolution displays, while a smaller font shows more code on screen. You can also change the font family if you prefer a specific monospace font. Replit supports standard web fonts and any monospace font your browser can render. Line height and letter spacing adjustments may also be available depending on the current Replit version.

Replit allows you to customize keyboard shortcuts through User Settings. Look for the Keyboard Shortcuts or Keybindings section. You can remap common actions like save, run, toggle sidebar, and search. The web app and desktop app maintain separate shortcut configurations. Be aware that the Tab key is captured by the File Editor, Console, and Shell for indentation purposes. Press Escape first to release keyboard focus before using Tab for other purposes like switching browser tabs.

Replit uses a three-tier UI: windows (browser tabs), panes (sections within a window), and tabs (files or tools within a pane). Click the three-dot menu in the top right of any tab to access layout options. Select Split Right to create a side-by-side layout or Split Down for a stacked layout. Drag tabs between panes to rearrange them. A productive layout for most developers is code editor on the left, preview on the right, and Shell at the bottom. You can also float a pane into its own window by selecting Float from the options menu, which is useful for putting the preview on a second monitor.

Projects accumulate files that you rarely need to see, like node_modules, package-lock.json, .config directories, and build output. Hide these from the file tree by adding them to the hidden array in your .replit file. Open the .replit file (use Show hidden files from the three-dot menu in the file tree if it is not visible) and add the paths you want to hide. Hidden files still exist and work normally; they are just not visible in the file tree. You can also toggle Show hidden files in the file tree menu to temporarily reveal everything.

1# Add to .replit to hide clutter
2hidden = [
3  ".config",
4  "node_modules",
5  "package-lock.json",
6  "dist",
7  ".next",
8  "replit.nix"
9]

Replit has built-in search functionality accessible from the left sidebar. Click the search icon or use the keyboard shortcut to open file search, which finds files by name across your entire project. For searching within file contents, use the Find in Files feature from the search panel. You can also use the Tools search bar at the top of the sidebar to quickly open any tool like Shell, Secrets, Git, or Database without scrolling through the Tools dock. These features become essential as your project grows beyond a handful of files.