A Kakoune / Neovim inspired editor, written in Rust.
The editing model is very heavily based on Kakoune; during development I found myself agreeing with most of Kakoune's design decisions.
For more information, see the website or documentation.
All shortcuts/keymaps can be found in the documentation on the website.
- Vim-like modal editing
- Multiple selections
- Built-in language server support
- Smart, incremental syntax highlighting and code editing via tree-sitter
It's a terminal-based editor first, but I'd like to explore a custom renderer (similar to Emacs) in wgpu or skulpin.
Note: Only certain languages have indentation definitions at the moment. Check
runtime/queries/<lang>/
for indents.scm
.
Packages are available for various distributions (see Installation docs).
If you would like to build from source:
git clone https://github.com/helix-editor/helix
cd helix
cargo install --path helix-term
This will install the hx
binary to $HOME/.cargo/bin
and build tree-sitter grammars in ./runtime/grammars
.
Helix needs its runtime files so make sure to copy/symlink the runtime/
directory into the
config directory (for example ~/.config/helix/runtime
on Linux/macOS, or %AppData%/helix/runtime
on Windows).
OS | Command |
---|---|
Windows (Cmd) | xcopy /e /i runtime %AppData%\helix\runtime |
Windows (PowerShell) | xcopy /e /i runtime $Env:AppData\helix\runtime |
Linux / macOS | ln -s $PWD/runtime ~/.config/helix/runtime |
Starting with Windows Vista you can also create symbolic links on Windows. Note that this requires elevated privileges - i.e. PowerShell or Cmd must be run as administrator.
PowerShell:
New-Item -ItemType SymbolicLink -Target "runtime" -Path "$Env:AppData\helix\runtime"
Cmd:
cd %appdata%\helix
mklink /D runtime "<helix-repo>\runtime"
The runtime location can be overridden via the HELIX_RUNTIME
environment variable.
NOTE: if
HELIX_RUNTIME
is set prior to callingcargo install --path helix-term
, tree-sitter grammars will be built in$HELIX_RUNTIME/grammars
.
If you plan on keeping the repo locally, an alternative to copying/symlinking
runtime files is to set HELIX_RUNTIME=/path/to/helix/runtime
(HELIX_RUNTIME=$PWD/runtime
if you're in the helix repo directory).
Packages already solve this for you by wrapping the hx
binary with a wrapper
that sets the variable to the install dir.
NOTE: running via cargo also doesn't require setting explicit
HELIX_RUNTIME
path, it will automatically detect theruntime
directory in the project root.
If you want to customize your languages.toml
config,
tree-sitter grammars may be manually fetched and built with hx --grammar fetch
and hx --grammar build
.
In order to use LSP features like auto-complete, you will need to install the appropriate Language Server for a language.
If installing from source, to use Helix in desktop environments that supports XDG desktop menu, including Gnome and KDE, copy the provided .desktop
file to the correct folder:
cp contrib/Helix.desktop ~/.local/share/applications
To use another terminal than the default, you will need to modify the .desktop
file. For example, to use kitty
:
sed -i "s|Exec=hx %F|Exec=kitty hx %F|g" ~/.local/share/applications/Helix.desktop
sed -i "s|Terminal=true|Terminal=false|g" ~/.local/share/applications/Helix.desktop
Please note: there is no icon for Helix yet, so the system default will be used.
Helix can be installed on macOS through homebrew:
brew install helix
Contributing guidelines can be found here.
Your question might already be answered on the FAQ.
Discuss the project on the community Matrix Space (make sure to join #helix-editor:matrix.org
if you're on a client that doesn't support Matrix Spaces yet).
Thanks to @JakeHL for designing the logo!