Atom Editor: Lost the ability to multi-line edit in Atom editor

Question

I am use to holding down Ctrl / Command to edit multiple lines at once in an Atom document, but this suddenly stopped working. I am wondering if there is a keyboard shortcut or something that I may have accidentally pressed that toggles this feature on / off.

I am on Mac OS 10.15.5 and have noticed other weird behavior editing text in all programs so that might be related but I have no idea how to resolve the issue. Any ideas are appreciated, thank you!

Edit: The "Multi Cursor On Click" option under Editor Settings is enabled.

user_11986684 · Answer

Open Atom and type Ctrl+Shift+I (or Alt+Cmd+I on a Mac) to open the dev tools. Go to the console and enter in the following code in it & hit enter to run it:

atom.config.set('core.editor.multiCursorOnClick', true)

This will fix the problem and when you re-open Atom (even after a restart) it will fix the problem.

user_12191340 · Answer

Ok found an answer on the Atom Discuss if anyone else is suffering this annoying issue! Seems to be related to a recent update to the application.

In your config file add this right below your core:

editor:
  multiCursorOnClick: true

So your result will look like this:

core:
editor:
  multiCursorOnClick: true

If there is no core existent you can include the core: portion as well but it may already be there depending on your add-ons.

user_12191340 · Answer

Here is the link to the discuss topic about the issue: https://discuss.atom.io/t/ctrl-left-click-multi-cursor-not-working/75553

And here is the direct link to post that explains the solution I followed from that topic: https://github.com/atom/atom/issues/20911#issuecomment-642581072

The config file is editable on Mac by clicking Atom in the top toolbar, then there is an option called "Config", not sure how to get to it in Windows but should be in a similar location.

Atom Editor: Lost the ability to multi-line edit in Atom editor

3 Answers