Zed Editor (which is written in Rust)

zed_editor_notes.md

Zed Editor NOTES

Tried Zed 1.7.2 on Ubuntu 26.04 .

Disabled AI completion in Markdown .md files because of useless completions (especially putting nonsensical paths while writing image links), by putting this in Zed Settings JSON file (source: zed-industries/zed#59727) :

"edit_predictions": {
  "provider": "copilot",        // Github Copilot
  "mode": "eager",
  "disabled_globs": ["**.md"],
}

Features

Many text manipulation ways & commands: https://zed.dev/blog/text-manipulation

• Speed: VS Code lags sometimes - at start (loading window), opening folder, opening a Jupyter Notebook. Zed opens instantly.
• https://zed.dev/docs/windows-and-projects : Open multiple folders at once -- when opening folder (same as VS Code - Ctrl+K Ctrl+O) simply select multiple folders at once!
• Multi-Cursors (put same cursor on multiple lines and edit - backspace or other keys press): Alt + Shift + Mouse Drag Up/Down
  • Depending on mouse horizontal position while dragging, you can edit both ahead of and behind the cursor in whole selected column where cursor is!!
• Multi-Buffers (I HAVEN'T TRIED YET): edit multiple files at once (eg. after project-wide search). Can combine with Multi-Cursors.
• Clickable links: Hover over any link in source code. It gets underlined. Do Ctrl + Click to open it in browser.

Issues

• Git Push to github (via Zed UI) keeps failing with error connection to host timed out. Having to git push via terminal only. zed-industries/zed#43157 -- issue for this is closed, but many other people have also messaged that the issue still happens.
• No PDF support currently (native or extension), though some people have made it work by forking Zed. Open issue for PDF support (& general web-view): zed-industries/zed#21208
• Terminal new tab (+ button) keeps getting hidden due to "auto-hiding" behavior. zed-industries/zed#58459

Markdown Issues

• Mathjax doesn't render ($...$ & $$...$$ formats). Github Discussion
• No image path completion (in image links). Tried Marksman extension (a custom Markdown language server) which does have this, but I found the completion image paths not useful (it was wrt project root folder, not current file's folder; many paths seemed missing; and it overwhelmingly tried to show all nested file paths at once instead of only current level files & folders at once like VS Code does). This among other issues in markdown language server is tracked at open issue zed-industries/zed#5243 .

Jupyter Notebook support (still in preview mode)

Jupyter Notebook tracking issue in Zed (implemented & not implemented features): zed-industries/zed#9778

Instructions adapted to enable from zed-industries/zed#25936 (reply in thread) :

1. Set environment variable LOCAL_NOTEBOOK_DEV=1 :

• Desktop app icon: modify ~/.local/share/applications/dev.zed.Zed.desktop like this (NOTE: .desktop and exe path may differ on your system, alter accordingly):

Exec=sh -c "LOCAL_NOTEBOOK_DEV=1 /home/sohang/.local/zed.app/bin/zed %U"

Here first starting a shell environment with sh -c "..." is important, direct command didn't work.

• For launching from terminal (like zed or zed /path/to/folder), set in your shell config (~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc): export LOCAL_NOTEBOOK_DEV=1 (or else make a command alias).

Alternative (untried): Set the environment variable globally for all apps: systemctl --user set-environment LOCAL_NOTEBOOK_DEV=1

2. In Zed's Settings > Edit settings file (JSON), add:

"feature_flags": {
   "tabular-data-preview": "on",
   "notebooks": "on",
}

Issues in Zed's Jupyter Notebook support

TODO: not sure if github issues exist for all these - create if not.

• In notebook, ensure to select a kernel before running any cell, else cell gets stuck at Running state. (but doesn't even prompt or raise error that no kernel selected!)
• Can't delete cells in notebook :( But can move cells up or down, so right now I'm just moving down temporary cells to bottom.
• No "run & below" button available (like in VS Code, where clicking this runs current cell and all following cells in notebook).
• Clicking on the same *.ipynb jupyter notebook multiple times in project/folder view opens the same jupyter notebook in multiple tabs!! Obviously clicking on a file whose tab already exists should just focus that tab. This bug doesn't happen for other file extensions.