overview.md

title: Collaboration description: "Real-time collaboration in Zed: share projects, edit code together, and communicate with voice chat."

Collaboration {#collaboration}

Zed supports real-time multiplayer editing. Multiple people can work in the same project simultaneously, seeing each other's cursors and edits as they happen.

Open the Collaboration Panel with {#kb collab_panel::ToggleFocus}. You'll need to sign in to access collaboration features.

Collaboration Panel {#collaboration-panel}

The Collaboration Panel has two sections:

  1. Channels: Persistent project rooms for team collaboration, with shared projects and voice chat.
  2. Contacts and Private Calls: Your contacts list for ad-hoc private sessions.

Warning: Sharing a project gives collaborators access to your local file system within that project. Only collaborate with people you trust.

See the Data and Privacy FAQs for more details.

Audio Settings {#audio-settings}

Selecting Audio Devices

You can select specific input and output audio devices instead of using system defaults. To configure audio devices:

  1. Open {#kb zed::OpenSettings}
  2. Navigate to Collaboration > Experimental
  3. Use the Output Audio Device and Input Audio Device dropdowns to select your preferred devices

Changes take effect immediately. If you select a device that becomes unavailable, Zed falls back to system defaults.

To test your audio configuration, click Test Audio in the same section. This opens a window where you can verify your microphone and speaker work correctly with the selected devices.

JSON configuration:

{
  "audio": {
    "experimental.output_audio_device": "Device Name (device-id)",
    "experimental.input_audio_device": "Device Name (device-id)"
  }
}

Set either value to null to use system defaults.