- Qt Creator Manual
- Indenting Text or Code
- Qt Creator Manual 6.0.2

Completing Code ◦ Using Qt Quick Toolbars

# Indenting Text or Code

When you type text or code, it is indented automatically according to the selected text editor or code style options. Select a block to indent it when you press Tab. Press Shift+Tab to decrease the indentation. You can disable automatic indentation.

You can specify indentation for:

- C++ files
- QML files
- Nim files
- Other text files

To fix the indentation in the file currently open in the editor, select options in the Edit > Advanced menu or use keyboard shortcuts:

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

## Specifying Indentation Settings

You can also specify indentation separately for each project. You can specify several sets of code style settings and easily switch between them. In addition, you can import and export code style settings.

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

To visualize whitespace in the editor, select Tools > Options > Text Editor > Display > Visualize whitespace.

To help you keep line length at a particular number of characters, set the number of characters in the Display right margin at column field. To use a context-specific margin when available, select the Use context-specific margin check box. For example, the margin could be set by the `ColumnLimit` option of the Clang Format plugin.

## Indenting C++ Files

To specify indentation settings for the C++ editor:

1. Select Tools > Options > C++.

   Note: The settings displayed here depend on which plugins you have enabled. If the Clang Format plugin is enabled, you'll see the settings described in Automatic Formatting and Indentation.

2. In the Current settings field, select the settings to modify and click Copy.

3. Give a name to the settings and click OK.
4. Click Edit to specify code style settings for the project.

You can specify how to:

- Interpret the Tab and Backspace key presses.
- Indent the contents of classes, functions, blocks, and namespaces.
- Indent braces in classes, namespaces, enums, functions, and blocks.
- Control switch statements and their contents.
- Align continuation lines.
- Bind pointers (*) and references (&) in types and declarations to identifiers, type names, or left or right `const` or `volatile` keywords.
- Name getter functions.

You can use the live preview to see how the options change the indentation.

To specify different settings for a particular project, select Projects > Code Style Settings.

### Automatic Formatting and Indentation

The Clang Format plugin uses the LibFormat library for automatic formatting and indentation.

To enable the plugin, select Help > About Plugins > C++ > ClangFormat. Then select Restart Now to restart Qt Creator and load the plugin.

Note: If you enable the plugin, do not use the Beautifier, because combining the two can provide unexpected results.

You can use Clang Format to enforce a coding style for a project or the whole organization. Create a `.clang-format` file that contains the Clang Format Style Options to use and save it in the root folder of the project or one of its parent folders. The plugin searches for the Clang format file recursively from the directory that contains the source file up to the file system root.

To specify settings for automatic formatting and indentation:

1. Select Tools > Options > C++.

2. Select the Format instead of indenting check box to use the Ctrl+I keyboard shortcut to format code instead of indenting it.
3. Select the Format while typing check box to apply the formatting while you type code.
4. Select the Format edited code on file save check box to apply the formatting to the edited code when you save the file.
5. Select the Override Clang Format configuration file check box to create a local configuration file that overrides the one stored in the file system.

   Note: This is not recommended, because it defeats the purpose of a Clang format file.

6. To modify the values in the file, select them in the left-side column and enter the new values.
7. To view examples of the new values in the right-hand column, select Apply.

To override the `.clang-format` file for a project, select Projects > Project Settings > Code Style > Override Clang Format configuration file.

You can create `.clang-format` files that contain the configuration options of a certain predefined style from the command line. For example, to create a format file for the LLVM style, enter the following command:

     clang-format -style=llvm -dump-config > .clang-format

## Indenting QML Files

To specify settings for the Qt Quick editor:

1. Select Tools > Options > Qt Quick.
2. In the Current settings field, select the settings to modify and click Copy.

3. Give a name to the settings and click OK.
4. Click Edit to specify code style settings for the project.

You can specify how to interpret the Tab key presses and how to align continuation lines.

To specify different settings for a particular project, select Projects > Code Style Settings.

## Indenting Nim Files

To specify settings for the Nim editor (experimental):

1. Select Tools > Options > Nim.
2. In the Current settings field, select the settings to modify and click Copy.

3. Give a name to the settings and click OK.
4. Click Edit to specify code style settings for the project.

You can specify how to interpret the Tab key presses and how to align continuation lines.

To specify different settings for a particular project, select Projects > Code Style.

## Indenting Other Text Files

To specify indentation settings for text files that do not contain C++ or QML code (such as Python code files), select Tools > Options > Text Editor > Behavior.

To specify different settings for a particular project, select Projects > Editor.

You can specify how to interpret the Tab and Backspace key presses and how to align continuation lines.

## Specifying Tab Settings

You can specify tab settings at the following levels:

- For all C++ files
- For all QML files
- For all other text files
- For C++ files in a project
- For QML files in a project
- For other text files in a project

### Specifying Tabs and Indentation

You can specify tab policy and tab size in the Tabs and Indentation group. In the Tab policy field, select whether to use only spaces or only tabs for indentation, or to use a mixture of them.

By default, the tab length in code editor is 8 spaces and the indent size is 4 spaces. You can specify the tab length and indent size separately for each project and for different types of files.

You can have continuation lines aligned with the previous line. In the Align continuation lines field, select Not at all to disable automatic alignment and indent continuation lines to the logical depth. To always use spaces for alignment, select With Spaces. To follow the Tab policy, select With Regular Indent.

## Specifying Typing Options

When you type text or code, it is indented automatically according to the selected text editor or code style options. To specify typing options, select Tools > Options > Text Editor > Behavior > Typing.

To disable automatic indentation, deselect the Enable automatic indentation check box.

You can specify how the indentation is decreased when you press Backspace in the Backspace indentation field. To go back one space at a time, select None. To decrease indentation in leading white space by one level, select Follows Previous Indents. To move back one tab length if the character to the left of the cursor is a space, select Unindents.

You can specify whether the Tab key automatically indents text when you press it. To automatically indent text, select Always in the Tab key performs auto-indent field. To only indent text when the cursor is located within leading white space, select In Leading White Space.

Your highlight definition file can contain definitions for both multi and single line comments. To apply the single line comment definition when commenting out a selection, select Prefer single line comments.

## Specifying Settings for Content

You can indent public, protected, and private statements and declarations related to them within classes.

You can also indent statements within functions and blocks and declarations within namespaces.

## Specifying Settings for Braces

You can indent class, namespace, enum and function declarations and code blocks.

## Specifying Settings for Switch Statements

You can indent case or default statements, or statements or blocks related to them within switch statements.

## Specifying Alignment

To align continuation lines to tokens after assignments, such as `=` or `+=`, select the Align after assignments check box. You can specify additional settings for aligning continuation lines in the General tab.

You can also add spaces to conditional statements, so that they are not aligned with the following line. Usually, this only affects `if` statements.

## Binding Pointers and References

To bind pointers (`*`) and references (`&`) in types and declarations to identifiers, type names, or left or right `const` or `volatile` keywords, select the check boxes in the Pointers and References tab.

The `*` and `&` characters are automatically bound to identifiers of pointers to functions and pointers to arrays.