- Qt Creator Documentation
- Indent text or code
- Qt Creator 16.0.0-beta1

How To

# Indent text or code

When you type text or code, it is indented automatically according to the selected text editor or code style preferences. Select a block to indent it when you select Tab. Select Shift+Tab to decrease the indentation.

## Don't detect indentation settings

To turn off the automatic detection of indentation settings, go to Preferences > Text Editor > Behavior and clear Auto detect.

## Fix indentation in an open file

To fix the indentation in the file currently open in the editor:

- On the editor toolbar, select Spaces, and then select Auto-indent Selection to automatically indent the selected text using the current settings.
- Go to Edit > Advanced, and select an indentation option or use keyboard shortcuts.

### Indentation options

- To automatically indent the highlighted text, select Auto-indent Selection or select Ctrl+I.
- To automatically format the highlighted text, select Auto-format Selection or select Ctrl+;.
- To adjust the wrapping of the selected paragraph, select Rewrap Paragraph or select Ctrl+E followed by R.
- To toggle text wrapping, select Enable Text Wrapping or select Ctrl+E followed by Ctrl+W.
- To visualize whitespace in the editor, select Visualize Whitespace or select Ctrl+E followed by Ctrl+V.
- To clear all whitespace characters from the currently open file, select Clean Whitespace.

## Automatically fix indentation upon file save

To automatically fix indentation according to the indentation settings when you save the file, go to Preferences > Text Editor > Behavior > Clean whitespace and select Clean indentation. Select Skip clean whitespace for file types to exclude the specified file types.

## Show whitespace in editor

To visualize whitespace in the editor, go to Preferences > Text Editor > Display > Visualize whitespace.

To visualize indentation, select Visualize Indent. To adjust the color of the visualization, change the value of the Visual Whitespace setting of the editor color scheme in Font & Colors.

## Display right margin

To help you keep line length at a particular number of characters, set the number of characters in Display right margin at column. To use a different color for the margin area, select Tint whole margin area. Clear it to show the margin as a vertical line.

To use a context-specific margin when available, select Use context-specific margin. Then, use the ClangFormat `ColumnLimit` option to set the margin, for example.

See also C++ Code Style, Behavior, Qt Quick Code Style, and Keyboard Shortcuts.

How To