Most people are happy to tile windows side by side in Windows when they want to read two documents at once or have a window from a different application open. Having multiple documents open at once can be a great help if you need to keep referring back to another document. For example, if you’re trying to code a custom function that’s defined in a separate file.
If you want to see more than one document at the same time in Sublime Text 3, you could drag a tab out into a second window. Alternatively, you can split the main window into multiple sub-windows, then click and drag your document tabs into the sub-window you prefer.
To configure how many sub-windows you want, click on “View” in the top bar, then “Layout” in the drop-down list. In the second level of the drop-down list, select which of the pre-configured layouts you want.
There are seven pre-configured layouts, the default is to only have one window, you can choose to have two, three, or four sub-windows side by side, by selecting the respective number of columns. Alternatively, you can choose to have two or three vertically stacked sub-windows, or a two by two grid.
If you want to add even more sub-windows you can, but you have to do so one by one. Click on “View” again, then click “Groups” directly below “Layout”. In the second level of the menu, click “New Group” to add a new sub-window.
Adding a more sub-windows than suggested in the pre-installed layouts will result in a number of columns with the last column being split vertically into the rest of the sub-windows. You can select how many columns appear in this view by selecting a “Max Columns” value on the same “Groups” menu.
Tip: You can open a new sub-window with a pair of keyboard shortcuts. To do so, you need to press Ctrl+K, then Ctrl+Shift+Up. You can repeat as many times as you like.
