alt Hacker NewsZed 1.0
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Well done on this milestone! Gave zed a decent chance last week and it wins on many fronts to replace my now scattered setup. 1. For me to use it I need to apply prettier formatting of the current project (maybe there is a way? i could not find it) 2. I need to run the claude cli, not an agent interface. or allow me to place the terminal on the left in the agent view or something.
for the everything else it was a win. will give it another chance in a month or three to see if it can do, excited to have a setup that easily navigates code diffs.
Can you fix the CLI on Windows? You broke it a few versions ago. 'zed --version' and all the other flags don't work. Maybe broken command parser or something, im not sure. Zed with zero flags still launches it. I particularly want to be able to pass it filenames for quick opening and --new and --wait. Used to work. Thanks!
Congrats to the Zed team! I've been using a combination of Zed + Gram [1] (which I predict may lag behind this 1.0 release in features/fixes). They are both nice, fast editors. However, I switched to Sublime Text 4 again recently and... I'm surprised to see how much clunkier Zed feels than Sublime. I can't put my finger on it, but Sublime, although lacking in features, feels considerably more polished and performant.
Congrats to the Zed team. I love that there's such a powerful and blazingly fast editor out there for us.
While it's been hard to use zed when the pull of claude/chatgpt desktop and terminal apps feel more full featured and take up more of the share of daily work, I continue to use Zed any time I do need to explore a codebase or review a markdown plan from an agent.
I hope that there can be improvements to the markdown preview because at least in my case, I'm using that feature a LOT these days.
Bravo! I've enjoyed using Zed and seeing its progress. Still waiting on python notebook support.
I actually downloaded and tried Zed first time about a week ago, because I needed a text editor that looks and behaves almost identically with Windows/macOS/Linux, so there is minimal switching hassle between developing for all these three OSs. And vims/emacs are no-choice for me, because if I don't use them for a while, I have to google how to exit/save etc. Not a choice for CEO.
I have now one week experience, and I like it very much. Some settings take a bit time to get right for my taste, and themes doesn't look polished, but otherwise it is excellent choice (even when thinking Sublime, which I considered the best of all). AI-things can be disabled for now, so let's hope it stays that way.
I also tried VSCode, and omg, I can't understand who want to use that... It is almost Visual Studio grade bad. At least by default settings. It couldn't even open 900 kb text file without freezing (Zed/Sublime had no problem, like 2026 computers/software shouldn't have with 1 mb file).
Looks much better than when I last tried it! But I couldn't get it to work as well as Cursor for AI development, maybe I just need to get more used to it?
- I tried to use the Cursor Agent via ACP, it worked but it seemed markedly stupider than when I would use Cursor directly (saying that i18n strings were being used when they weren't, editing code differently than what I asked for, also when it is running terminal commands it seems to just say "Run Command: Terminal" and has no information on what's going on). Maybe I just need to not use Cursor Agent, but my company pays for it already so that's what I tried.
- Providing context is also cludgier - In cursor I often highlight specific chunks of code and add it to the AI context via Cmd+L, but I couldn't figure out any specific way of doing that with a keyboard in Zed besides clicking a tiny + button to add "Selection" to context, which got old fast.
- Maybe I just need to get used to it but reviewing code with the git integration is just hard for me to follow; one giant editor with every change in it is just harder for me to grok than showing each file one by one; so it was tiring to review the big changes produced by LLMs. Also, when you stage changes the file just stays where it is with a barely noticeable check in the checkbox in the sidebar - I prefer the behavior of Cursor where it actually moves the staged files to a separate section, but some kind of more obvious visual indication besides that perhaps would help. I did like the tree view, though!
- The tsgo and oxlint LSP servers kept crashing, which was frustrating. GraphQL LSP server also couldn't understand graphql.config.mjs, which is strange as that's supported out of box by graphql-config and works fine in Cursor/VSCode.
- I tried using a few of the different Edit Suggestion LLM options, but unfortunately Cursor is just way too good compared to any of them (slow, and just not very helpful in comparison).
- Just in general figuring out how to configure them is confusing, there's like 3-4 different places to configure agents and LLMs for different purposes, I found it very fragmented and confusing and the docs didn't make it particularly easy to set things up.
That all said, the performance was muuuuch better than Cursor. But the UX issues and general bugginess of ACP and these LSP plugins were impeding my workflow too much for me to tolerate it so back to Cursor for me. If anyone has tips on how I might make some of these better that would be cool, but if it's just inherent limitations then maybe I'll try again in 6 months or something.
Congrats! I have been using Zed for many years now, arguably the best piece of software I have ever used, and the main reason I switched to macOS.
The editor is so good it has been defining how I work - at first I would quickly copy relevant files into multiple AI chat apps using Text Threads (was quite annoyed when it was replaced by the Agent Panel which at the time made it very awkward to add relevant context and copy text), and now I really can't imagine living without the new Threads Sidebar.
It's not perfect, but whenever something is broken then I know it's just a matter of time before it gets fixed or improved.
Zed is a great editor. I think they have done an excellent job and hope they are successful. That said, I do not feel compelled to switch to it. For a pure text editing experience, I've always felt most comfortable with Geany. When I want to extend the editor, I reach for Emacs. AFAICT, extending Zed means using Rust, and that's never going to happen.
I like Zed but as a user of Scala it is not open-enough of a platform to be useful beyond small projects.
e.g. its "run" gutter icons rely on context free grammar queries, but of course Scala allows to define main methods via inheritance from a class. Zed's extension api should let the extension report entry points via whatever internal mechanism it needs.
This also goes for the various testing libraries in Scala that because only tree-sitter queries are supported therefore need a custom pattern match for each library as they have their own mechanisms, rather than letting the extension provide its own test harness (easily handled by build tools automatically) - Zed should provide something similar to VS Code's Test Explorer and Testing API interface.
Also extensions can't add new UI, so you are stuck fitting to the recipe Zed team provides for you to plug into, and often enough this is not satisfactory.
I loved Zed for a few years - but their insistence on not letting Claude Code use Zed as an external editor forced me to build my own IDE.
This turned out to be pretty awesome because I built something completely customized to my workflow and it has increased my productivity by several factors.
1.0 and Zed still won't appear until I touch my mouse or press a key after it's been started...
I really wanted to like Zed, but the tab complete was just unusable compared to Cursor's. Be forewarned.
https://x.com/MatthewTse_/status/2042680214187315683
If they can fix tab complete, I'll give it another try!
I tried zed a couple of times, it's something I'd like to play more because the feeling is fantastic ... but for python development pycharm is still superior.
PS: One thing I'm really missing is the ctrl+shift+f equivalent
I really want to use Zed, their technical approach and product design seem great. However, I had to stop using it after a few months because the Typescript LSP was just unbearably slow. An order of magnitude slower than VSCode, often more than 10 seconds to typecheck a change. More worrying is that this has been a known issue for more than two years
Still, congrats to the team. Hopefully this launch means more money to fix issues so I can start using it again.
Still absolutely no support for screen readers?
Despite promising it for years and every comparable product having it.
I love Zed. I was a fan of Sublime Text, and could never get used to VSCode. I thought I'd try Zed a try when it was still extremely raw, before the AI integration, and I loved the simplicity and speed almost immediately. When they added better python linting features, I switched, and haven't used anything else. I know that there are many anti-AI folks here, but I feel lucky that we they added the Zed Agent, and all the integration. It's been great not having to switch back to VSCode for copilot.
Just wanted to mention they added amp jump to helix mode in preview 1.1.2!! Aka "gw" in helix. And it's AMAZING!!! Seems silly but this was the only thing keeping me from fully switching. It's such a snappy editor, and the helix mode is surprisingly faithful. Expand/shrink selection, multiple cursors from searching in a selection, amp jump... it's just amazing.
Helix lovers who are dying waiting for helix plugins, please try this out
I love Zed, it's my main editor and has been for a while. I disable all the AI stuff, though, as it's not for me.
It has some issues and is missing some stuff I want, but I'm happy with it anyway.
One feature I use a lot is remote development over SSH.
Feature-wise, Zed is still far from VS Code, but for me, the change has been worth it for the performance increase alone. I'm really happy with Zed, and I think it has a bright future ahead. Congratulations on the 1.0 release!
Well, just fired it up on Windows, and already dislike it. And I went in with a positive attitude, because I would welcome a better tool than VS Code.
Main problem: No menu. Where are the settings? The first thing I wanted to do was move the file treeview to the left side; I don't know what country the authors live in, but in Western countries we read from left to right. But nope, there's no View menu or anything of the sort.
Then I examined every other little button around the UI, to no avail. I want to get stuff done; not play with an Advent calendar, hunting for goodies.
Good for them, but I wish they'd hurry up and catch up on some of the big missing features. Really hoping they'll accept my PR to add the missing call hierarchy feature before the GitHub issue turns 2 years old :)
i've been a zed user for almost 6 months. i've encountered maaany bugs which i reported, or that were already reported. they're still there. meanwhile, every single update shipped a feature or bugfix for "ai agents".
not sure how 1.0 ships with that massive pile of bugs. but ai agents are the first-class citizen in this editor, and developer experience is not a priority.
funny thing is i uninstalled zed right before the 1.0 release. kinda relieved i didn't miss anything.
I'm really thankful for Zed. I claim it's a better VI successor than vim/neovim. The fact that it comes with batteries included is a huge win. Multi buffer is super useful. I'd prefer if it was NOT written like a game engine, not depend on GPU, but I can't have everything.
Seems like a de-webbed fork of this is a no brainer. its crazy what they think people will just take lying down from a open source project.
I like Zed for the same reason I liked Atom: it's very light. These past few months my workflow has basically consisted of me running Codex + Gemini CLI in the terminal panel and hopping through files in another. Easy-peasy.
It's a nice departure from the visual overstimulation I get while in VS Code (for which I have to take some blame as I need to remove some installed plugins).
There are a couple of features shown in the v1.0 video that I was unaware of and am keen to check out.
Nice! I might try it, it seems genuinely innovative.
I don't need much from an editor. Instant cold start, sane colors, sane folding in origami style , like "kent folding" allows to do on vim ( https://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=416 ).
Not much, but it seems all modern editors fail to do good origami folding.
Does Zed do this?
I'm trying it out, looks pretty decent.
For better or worse, my current workflow is to do most things through WSL on Windows 11. VSCode supports running the editor natively on Windows, but then having an agent or something inside WSL that lets me remote control what's going on there. Does Zed do anything similar?
Currently I'm just access the workspace in Zed via Windows Explorer, but I wonder if that's going to kneecap some of the integrations.
EDIT: nm, Zed supports exactly the same kind of remote editor session, via hamburger -> File -> Open Remote
I switched to Zed for the first time over the weekend on a somewhat complex mixed C/rust project. I was able to set the whole thing up in about an hour to my liking and it is a really nice IDE, coming from bloated VS Code. I think they have a really nice AI-assisted coding setup, I think that the "file review pane, in line with IDE" UX is correct for AI tools. I'm skeptical that terminal or "agent" based AI programming is viable long-term.
I just upgraded to the latest to try it out. It's like Visual Studio Code and I like that. But both are VERY LLM focused and I am not using that at all. If it bothers me with LLM stuf I will switch to https://gram.liten.app/
Congratulations! I recall there used to be difficulties handling non-ASCII characters in the built-in terminal, but now I can use it without any problems regarding Japanese input. Providing a stable, real-time, stateful application like an editor is incredibly difficult.I appreciate the efforts of the team and contributors.
Congratulations to the team, big milestone. Aside from an occasional drop to Positron for dataframe visualization, I haven't had a need to open any other IDEs like PyCharm/IDEA or VSCode in a long time, and I've been using them for over five years at this point. Zed's internals is software engineering at its finest, and I hope GPUI will eventually become the go-to Rust GUI library.
I have been following zed for quite some time and I use it daily alongside nvim (haven’t yet tried zed vim mode, planning to). I really like the performance and control zed provides, as well as the reduced UI clutter compared to alternatives. The collaborator functionality is not talked enough by the community but I believe it’s an ambitious idea worth pursuing. Wishing the team all the best.
Ever since agents came out I had been lost trying to figure out what I should replace my heavy IntelliJ with. I switched fully over to Zed once they shipped the git graph in stable [0] and couldn't be happier. Congrats on 1.0!
Can anyone comment on the inline AI tab completion performance of Zed compared to Cursor? Hoping to move away from Cursor as it seems like they break my settings every time they push an update and Vim motions stop working at random.
The only thing stopping me from leaving Cursor is their tab completion, which is honestly just incredible.
Congrats on the 1.0 release to the team!
I tried Zed once, but unfortunately had to give up because of:
- constant CPU usage when idle,
- blurry fonts,
- low-contrast light themes.I used the fastest editor I've ever used, and the UI design was also very good, but the Git interface didn't show the commit history, which was a bit like JetBrains' Git interface.
Zed is my daily driver for the last couple of month. I tried it a few times before but had to switch to various other editors for different projects. But my plan was to finally ditch VSCode as my normal file editor. I really love how fast the editor fires up. I also love the fact that it has great vim binding not just in the editor pane.
Congrats on shipping !
I love that most of my (small but important) set of keyboard shortcuts from VSCode jsut works.
- Terminal - Ctrl + P (and siblings).
Suggestion (minor):
To me, font size is as import these days as dark/light mode. Would be cool if basic font-size (ui panel etc, were part of default/first-run config)
Also like that AI is a "first class citizen" it seems on Zed.
Well done guys :)
Zed is a really good editor in an age that every other editor has forgotten to be about *editing* and wants to be a wrapper around coding agents.
On the agent side, I really like their ACP approach but for now it seems buggy and limited in functionality (previous message editing, occasionally never-ending work, ...)
Unrelated to the actual editor but this is one of the best looking and most responsive websites I've ever used
I would really love to see an iOS remote control app for zed. I am using it on throw away microvms via ssh. Would love to have the zed server running there, control agents via phone and occasionally use my Mac to connect to the server and use the desktop app as normal for review and hand coding
I want to use Zed but last time I tried it was spawning node processes, i guess for lsp. (I develop in Go)
This is a solid release and first time, I feel like it is pretty good for the use case of decent sized Typescript mono repos. I can jump around codebase quicker.
PS: Pretty daring move to think of building an editor when there's already sublime, textmate, Jetbrains and VSCode.
I want to like and use Zed, but in my mind there was some odd commerce, or 3rd party share decision that was made which had me avoid it for security reasons. Like... Zed was endorsed as the only editor for something... can anyone remember or elaborate? I cannot!
Congrats on 1.0!
Though it's a pretty big bummer to see that extension improvements were removed from the roadmap.
Congrats on reaching your first major
Just downloaded, installed, turns out it doesn't have pdf preview capability
I would use zed, but I can't get over tabs for terminals and the file explorer doesn't refresh when new files are added from external sources, outside of that it's pretty good.