Please explain what is instaproject.

[Piotr Kolasiński]

Can someone explain me what is instaproject? I see this word in docs like „what’s new in this version”, but can’t find it in user guide or on Bare Bones site. Maybe it’s time to upgrade Users Guide (for fresh adepts of BBEdit)?

Piotr

[Massimo Rainato]

Hi, Someone here.

In my ear instaproject sound like instagram and other insta-something child of polaroid fast self develop photo from ‘70.

Il giorno mer 8 lug 2026 alle 09:46 Piotr Kolasiński <ptk...@gmail.com> ha scritto:

Can someone explain me what is instaproject? I see this word in docs like „what’s new in this version”, but can’t find it in user guide or on Bare Bones site. Maybe it’s time to upgrade Users Guide (for fresh adepts of BBEdit)?

Piotr

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[GP]

First, you're probably correct. The BBEdit User Manual could use an update for something on instaproject so perhaps you could submit such a request to BBEdit support.

That said ...

If you search Google with "what is a bbedit instaproject," you'll get a pretty good AI Overview explaining what an instaproject is and how one can be created.

Also, searching this forum for variations of instaproject, insta-project, insta project, etc., you can find a concise description in the Insta Projects thread by Jim Correia:

An Insta Project is just a project that doesn’t prompt you to save (unless you make modifications) based on how it was created.

You can create them by dragging folders onto BBEdit’s Dock/Finder icon, asking BBEdit to open a folder with a script. or by choosing a folder off the recent menu.

A slight addition/expansion to Jim's creation list is using the command line tool bbedit with:

bbedit path-to-folder

in the terminal or a shell script.

[Kerri Hicks]

On Wed, Jul 8, 2026 at 3:46 AM Piotr Kolasiński <ptk...@gmail.com> wrote:

Can someone explain me what is instaproject?

From the BBEdit 10 release:

“Instaprojects: If you drag a folder to BBEdit to open it, or use the bbedit command-line tool to open a folder, BBEdit will create an on-the-fly project for that folder. This project behaves in all respects like a project document, but it is temporary and BBEdit will not prompt you to save it when closing the project window.”

 —Kerri

[Piotr Kolasiński]

Thanks!

 I’ve started using BBEdit from version 15 :-)
 

Piotr