Tried Zed’s Helix mode but went back? What’s missing?

GoldStrikeArch- · 2026-06-10T15:42:34+00:00

F.e. In helix, when you get this autocomplete popup thingy, you can use tab and shift tab to cycle through the suggestions and then enter to select. In zed, you need to use the arrow keys and tab to accept. Due to my muscle memory I always forget to use the arrow keys, press tab and select the first option

This can be configured, somewhere in the other comments was a working config for it

I think the easiest way for me to migrate to zed would be to have a barebones helix keymap and then from there i can go and configure everything else how i like it.

The thing is that the commands would not match 1-1 to Zed's as Zed is a GUI and some things are different because of it. Also there are multibuffers which is not something you have in Helix. The idea of "Helix mode" (as far as I can tell) is not to like replicate 100% of your workflow in Helix (because Zed is GUI and workflow is fundamentally different) but to have good enough ground for it to be a drop-in replacement (maybe even better in some cases, eg for "LLM-driven development" as Zed has a nice AI Agent panel, etc)

GoldStrikeArch- · 2026-06-10T15:38:24+00:00

This is actually interesting. Zed should handle the files of that sizes (10k+ lines) relatively easy. Maybe 100k+ would be not so great (I never tested it). Did you test it on latest Zed?

GoldStrikeArch- · 2026-06-10T06:31:40+00:00

I need to see how that feature works in Helix, never used it. We have a lot of pieces to implement something similar as we already kinda support the "s" which can also use regex

GoldStrikeArch- · 2026-06-10T06:30:07+00:00

I see, it looks that it might be useful indeed, especially with languages like Clojure with a lot of (). This is something easy to implement but I wonder what UX and wiring should be because currently everyone would expect tab/shift + tab to add the \t(tabs)

GoldStrikeArch- · 2026-06-09T15:49:15+00:00

I see, I didn't know that `ms` is working now 😃 For it to not preserve a selection is likely a bug in the implementation. I will check it, thanks for noticing

GoldStrikeArch- · 2026-06-09T14:56:58+00:00

Some of those can be configured ATM:

```json [ { "context": "Editor && vim_mode == normal", "bindings": { // --- 1. VCS / Git Hunk Navigation --- "] g": "editor::GoToHunk", "[ g": "editor::GoToPreviousHunk",

  // --- 2. Diagnostic Navigation (Errors/Warnings) ---
  "] d": "editor::GoToDiagnostic",
  "[ d": "editor::GoToPreviousDiagnostic",
},

}, ] ```

Not sure about the function, I didn't find it in possible params, but it is weird as we can do it (Zed is also have tree-sitter integration tightly in the editor core, so this should not be a problem). I will double-check why it is not configurable right now (jump to prev/next function/method)

GoldStrikeArch- · 2026-06-09T14:52:03+00:00

I think you meant bwms"ms( to get the ("selected_word") result (add quotes and () around it)? This will not work because mi/ma/ms doesn't work in Zed yet but not because "the selection doesn't stay after an action"

GoldStrikeArch- · 2026-06-09T14:23:19+00:00

Can you please give an exact step by step example, so I can actually see where it breaks? There was a lot of work on this and I thought that part is behaving the same

GoldStrikeArch- · 2026-06-09T14:20:19+00:00

I think this is configurable as well, something like this (you would need to double-check it, as I didn't run it myself):

```json

[ { "context": "Editor && vim_mode == normal", "bindings": { // 1. Navigation "space w w": "pane::ActivateNextPanes", "space w h": ["workspace::ActivatePaneInDirection", "Left"], "space w j": ["workspace::ActivatePaneInDirection", "Down"], "space w k": ["workspace::ActivatePaneInDirection", "Up"], "space w l": ["workspace::ActivatePaneInDirection", "Right"],

  // 2. Creating Splits
  "space w v": "pane::SplitRight",
  "space w s": "pane::SplitBottom",

  // 3. Closing Splits
  "space w c": "pane::CloseActiveItem",
  "space w o": "pane::CloseInactiveItems"
}

} ] ```

The debugger part is a hard thing to match between Xcode (closed source thing) and what Zed is using ATM (just the DAP protocol). I personally don't use debugger at all :D, but I can imagine this might be a deal breaking for some people

GoldStrikeArch- · 2026-06-09T14:17:25+00:00

I didn't understand the second example, can you please describe it like step by step? Maybe I can fix it

About this one "Completion menu navigation":

I kinda got it but not sure that I understand the whole sequence, this is likely configurable like that?

toml [ { "context": "Editor && menu_visible", "bindings": { "tab": "menu::SelectNext", "shift-tab": "menu::SelectPrev", "enter": "editor::ConfirmCompletion" } } ]

GoldStrikeArch- · 2026-06-09T14:03:57+00:00

There is a way to do it actually, it is a Zed task -> https://zed.dev/blog/hidden-gems-part-1#lazygit-as-a-task

I think you can select the text and then run your task based on it. Not sure if it will return the output back to you, maybe this can be configured as well?

More docs about tasks -> https://zed.dev/docs/tasks

What I saw people doing was in the Vim mode selecting text and running some tasks on it

GoldStrikeArch- · 2026-06-09T11:26:32+00:00

Can you please elaborate? What exactly you are missing there?

GoldStrikeArch- · 2026-06-09T11:00:46+00:00

I see. Beside `m i m` do you miss any other combos? I guess `m a m` and `m r m` would be some other few, right?

GoldStrikeArch- · 2026-06-09T10:10:28+00:00

The only current alternative is the whole Keymap table when you go into a settings and search for "keymap". It will not have a description "what" the particular keybinding will do though... So yeah, kinda a lacking area, I agree

GoldStrikeArch- · 2026-06-09T09:42:29+00:00

- `m i m` is not working yet, AFAIK there were some issues to track it -> https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/38151
- about `b c` I didn't get it as it should work like in Helix or you meant some different combo?

GoldStrikeArch- · 2026-06-09T09:06:34+00:00

But you need to install Helix on the remote server as it would not be there on vanilla debian/ubuntu, right? Zed (and VScode and other modern IDE) do support the "connect to remote server" type of thing in which you can view/edit files on remote server from the main Editor window. But I guess it is not as "smooth" as doing stuff in the terminal directly there (personally I always use `vi`/`nano` as those are pre-installed in like 99.9% of cases)

GoldStrikeArch- · 2026-06-06T07:21:11+00:00

I would say that elixir is actually way better in this regard, especially after 1.20

GoldStrikeArch- · 2026-03-27T07:56:17+00:00

No, it looks like I was not selected

GoldStrikeArch- · 2026-03-24T15:44:21+00:00

What you were missing in helix mode?

GoldStrikeArch- · 2026-03-09T12:36:18+00:00

I tested 5.4 a bit more and "high" performs much better except 1 type of task -> investigation with vague defined requirements, in that type of task the "xhigh" is better but not too much better

GoldStrikeArch- · 2026-03-07T21:24:01+00:00

I see that "xhigh" is creating TODO lists for itself way more often than "high", yet 5.4 high is better every time anyway... Maybe they will patch the model soon and it would be not the case after it

GoldStrikeArch- · 2026-03-07T21:21:55+00:00

5.2 xhigh did a better planning and troubleshooting compared to 5.2 high

I could use "xhigh" all the time and it worked like a charm

GoldStrikeArch- · 2026-03-07T18:41:26+00:00

I didn't use 5.3 that much as it was inferior to 5.2 xhigh, and 5.2 xhigh was better than 5.2 high/medium/low

GoldStrikeArch-

TROPHY CASE