Using the Edit feature in Cyberduck freeware FTP browser for OSX

By Jaems • Jun 22nd, 2008 • Category: Tutorials

Note: You should always have a backup of files that are edited in the following way.

One of the great features of the freeware FTP browser Cyberduck, is the ability to edit files directly from the file browser. The reason I am writing this post, is because I used Cyberduck for about three years before I even knew you could do this. It’s possible that it hasn’t always been a feature, but recently I found out that they had added TacoHTML to the list of possible file editors, and I thought “hey what’s this?”. As it turns out, I couldn’t get TacoHTML to run in this capacity, but that’s not so important, as we’ll see here:

Why is this useful? Well, even if you are running a blog where you can do all of your editing online, there is still an occasional need for a good ol’ text file. For example, I use a text file to contain the info text for some of the menus on this site. That way, I can add and take away items from the pages from one place, without having to change the info for every single instance of the page. In the old days, I would need to edit the file on my desktop, then upload it via Cyberduck.

Now, all I have to do is set the Preferences->Browser to “Double click opens file in external editor” by setting the preference shown below:

You can tell Cyberduck to edit a file when you double click it

As I said before, I was not able to get TacoHTML to work as an external editor. I did, however, manage to get Smultron to work. Smultron is a very good code editor and is completely free. If you download and install it, it will then show up as a selectable item in your Editor pulldown list in Cyberduck:

Using Smultron to edit files in Cyberduck

If you select Smultron from the list above, and you enable “Double Click opens files in external editor”, then you can begin interacting with online files directly from Cyberduck. Next time you want to change a php file, just double click it, make the change, and then choose “Save”. The file is automatically downloaded, saved, and uploaded again without any undo stress on you or your computer. The process is very fast.

If you don’t want to enable click to edit, then there are a few other options. One is that the Editor should appear in the toolbar as shown below. In addition, you can use Apple-K to edit a selected file with your chosen editor.