Installing Helix

To install Helix, follow the instructions specific to your operating system. Note that:

  • To get the latest nightly version of Helix, you need to build from source.

  • To take full advantage of Helix, install the language servers for your preferred programming languages. See the wiki for instructions.

Pre-built binaries

Download pre-built binaries from the GitHub Releases page. The tarball contents include an hx binary and a runtime directory. To set up Helix:

  1. Add the hx binary to your system's $PATH to allow it to be used from the command line.
  2. Copy the runtime directory to a location that hx searches for runtime files. A typical location on Linux/macOS is ~/.config/helix/runtime.

To see the runtime directories that hx searches, run hx --health. If necessary, you can override the default runtime location by setting the HELIX_RUNTIME environment variable.