FAQ - helix-editor/helix GitHub Wiki

• Use the default keybind , bound to the keep_primary_selection command.

• Add this to your config.toml:

  [editor.cursor-shape]
  insert = "bar"
  normal = "block"
  select = "underline"

• Add this to your config.toml:

  [keys.insert]
  j = { k = "normal_mode" }

• The TOML standard requires that these characters are quoted:

  [keys.normal]
  ö = "extend_line_up" # This line is invalid TOML
  "ö" = "extend_line_up" # This line is valid TOML

• Add this to your config.toml:

  # to see more "adaptive" themes,
  # type `:theme base16_` in Normal mode.
  theme = "base16_default"

  refer to Theme docs

• You can also use color names like red, light-blue, etc to refer to the terminal’s colors in a theme file; refer the theme color palette documentation.

• Type % to select the entire file, then s to bring up a select: prompt. Enter your search, and press enter. All matches in the file will be selected; you can now use c to change them all simultaneously.

To make search fully case sensitive add the following to config.toml:

[editor.search]
smart-case = false

If the LSP for the language is active and supports autoformat, and the auto-format option is on (check your and the repo’s languages.toml), then this will happen on save. If there is an alternative command you can run in the terminal to format, you can pipe the whole buffer to it manually with %|<formatter><enter>.

You can use :config-open to open the config in Helix.

Enable logging via the -v flag, with each use (up to -vvv) increasing the verbosity.

You can use :log-open to open the log in Helix.

Check https://docs.helix-editor.com/guides/adding_languages.html

You can specify custom grammars per-project/per-directory by placing the languages.toml in .helix/languages.toml at the root of your project. See https://docs.helix-editor.com/languages.html

Ctrl-c closes popups like LSP signature-help, hover, and auto-completion.

• Current status as of December 2022:

There’s two prototypes we’re exploring that could potentially exist side by side: a typed list/ML-like implementation for scripting and a Rust based interface for things that require performance. Could potentially run both in wasm but I’m personally a bit unhappy with how big wasm implementations are, easily several orders of magnitude compared to the editor

Originally posted in https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/discussions/3806#discussioncomment-4438007

As of February 2024, this is being worked on in https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/pull/8675

• Past discussions:

  • Initial discussion

  • Pre-RFC discussion

  • Plugin system MVP

We shoot to cut a release around every two to three months. We use CalVer versioning, so if the current release is v22.08, it was released in August of 2022.

We are not interested in supporting alternative paradigms. The core of Helix’s editing is based on Selection → Action, and it would require extensive changes to create a true Vi/Vim keymap. However, there is a third-party keymap: https://github.com/LGUG2Z/helix-vim

j and k are intentionally mapped to visual vertical movement. This is a more intuitive default that makes working with heavily soft-wrapped text (like this Markdown document) much easier. Textual vertical movement is bound to gk and gj. So you can use 3gj and 3gk instead of 3j and 3k to jump to a relative line number.

These commands are intentionally separate (with no special casing for count != 0) as they represent the fundamental vertical movement primitives. All other vertical movement behavior can be created by combining these commands using conditions. For example:

If these fundamental primitives had such special handling built in, that would limit what could be implemented. Furthermore, helix is slightly opinionated towards unsurprising and consistent behavior.

This behavior is by design. Pressing x will extend the selection to the current line unless the current line is already selected. If the line is already selected it will extend the selection to the next line. This allows repeatedly pressing x to quickly select a few lines.

In the case of an empty line, the entire line is already selected (since there is only a newline character on the line). The intention is to use selections interactively so you would not press x in this case because the line is already selected. For example, if you wanted to delete an empty line you would just press d.

In cases where you always want to extend the selection to the line bounds and never want to extend to the next line you can use X. For example, if you want a key combination to blindly mash to delete a line that would be Xd.

This is not currently supported. You should build and run code in a separate terminal pane or split.

Ensure that you have a C compiler installed:

Ensure that you have mapped the Option key to ESC+ in the iTerm2 preferences via Preferences > Profiles > Keys

Previous issues: https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/issues/773, https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/issues/1223, https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/issues/1915.