CudaText Plugin: “Disk Wins” (Force Auto-Reload on External Change)

CudaText has no built-in option that silently reloads a file the moment it changes on disk — every built-in “changed on disk” mode still shows some kind of prompt (modal or modal-less) before reloading (see ui_notif_confirm in default.json, values 0-4, all of which ask). This plugin closes that gap: disk always wins, no prompt, ever.

Archived here so nobody has to re-derive the CudaText plugin API for this again. Source of truth for the plugin itself lives in cuda_disk_wins/ in this folder.

What it does

  • Polls every open, named file once per second (configurable via TIMER_INTERVAL in __init__.py).

  • If a file’s mtime on disk changed, the plugin re-reads it and calls Editor.set_text_all() — overwriting any unsaved changes in the editor tab without asking.

  • Clears the “modified” flag afterwards (PROP_MODIFIED = False), so the tab looks clean, as if nothing ever diverged.

  • Best-effort restores caret position and the top visible line after reload.

  • Adds two commands under Plugins → Disk Wins:

    • Toggle auto-reload on/off

    • Check now (manual one-shot check)

Why a plugin instead of a setting

CudaText’s own file-watcher (ui_notif) only ever offers “ask” behaviors:

ui_notif_confirm

Behavior

0

modal-less prompt, always

1

modal-less prompt, if editor modified or Undo not empty

2

modal-less prompt, if editor modified

3

modal prompt, always

4

modal prompt, if editor modified

There is no value that means “reload automatically, no prompt, keep going.” Hence this small plugin, which runs its own polling loop and reloads directly through the Python API.

Installation

mkdir -p ~/.config/cudatext/py
cp -r cuda_disk_wins ~/.config/cudatext/py/

Restart CudaText.

Important: also disable CudaText’s own change-notification dialog so it doesn’t fight with the plugin. In ~/.config/cudatext/settings/user.json:

{
    "ui_notif": false
}

(Equivalent to Options → Settings – user config in the UI.) Restart CudaText again after this change.

Caveats

  • This is intentionally destructive: unsaved editor edits are discarded silently the moment the file changes externally. That’s the entire point of the plugin — don’t install it if you sometimes want to keep local edits over external changes.

  • Only reacts to changes in the file’s mtime; typing in the editor itself does not trigger a reload (no feedback loop).

  • If the file is deleted externally, the plugin does nothing until it reappears (no crash, no repeated reload attempts).

  • Encoding is read via PROP_ENC and mapped to the closest Python codec; extend ENC_MAP in __init__.py if you use an encoding not already listed.

Origin

Built for the “always prefer filesystem changes over unsaved editor buffers, no confirmation” requirement discussed when setting up CudaText via yay -S cudatext-qt6-bin python on Arch.