Configuring Zed

Zed is designed to be configured: we want to fit your workflow and preferences exactly. We provide default settings that are designed to be a comfortable starting point for as many people as possible, but we hope you will enjoy tweaking it to make it feel incredible.

In addition to the settings described here, you may also want to change your theme, configure your key bindings, set up tasks or install extensions.

Settings Editor

You can browse through many of the supported settings via the Settings Editor, which can be opened with the {#kb zed::OpenSettings} keybinding, or through the zed: open settings action in the command palette. Through it, you can customize your local, user settings as well as project settings.

Note that not all settings that Zed supports are available through the Settings Editor yet. Some more intricate ones, such as language formatters, can only be changed through the JSON settings file {#kb zed::OpenSettingsFile}.

User Settings File

Your settings JSON file can be opened with {#kb zed::OpenSettingsFile}. By default it is located at ~/.config/zed/settings.json, though if you have XDG_CONFIG_HOME in your environment on Linux it will be at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/zed/settings.json instead.

Whatever you have added to your user settings file gets merged with any local configuration inside your projects.

Default Settings

In the Settings Editor, the values you see set are the default ones. You can also verify them in JSON by running {#action zed::OpenDefaultSettings} from the command palette.

Extensions that provide language servers may also provide default settings for those language servers.

Project Settings File

Similarly to user files, you can open your project settings file by running {#action zed::OpenProjectSettings} from the command palette. This will create a .zed directory containing.zed/settings.json.

Although most projects will only need one settings file at the root, you can add more local settings files for subdirectories as needed. Not all settings can be set in local files, just those that impact the behavior of the editor and language tooling. For example you can set tab_size, formatter etc. but not theme, vim_mode and similar.

The syntax for configuration files is a super-set of JSON that allows // comments.

Per-release Channel Overrides

Zed reads the same settings.json across all release channels (Stable, Preview or Nightly). However, you can scope overrides to a specific channel by adding top-level stable, preview, nightly or dev objects. They are merged into the base configuration with settings from these keys taking precedence upon launching the specified build. For example:

{
  "theme": "sunset",
  "vim_mode": false,
  "nightly": {
    "theme": "cave-light",
    "vim_mode": true
  },
  "preview": {
    "theme": "zed-dark"
  }
}

With this configuration, Stable keeps all base preferences, Preview switches to zed-dark, and Nightly enables Vim mode with a different theme.

Changing settings in the Settings Editor will always apply the change across all channels.

All Settings Reference

For a complete list of all available settings, see the All Settings reference.