Installation

We provide pre-built binaries on the GitHub Releases page.

OSX

TODO: brew tap

Please use a pre-built binary release for the time being.

Linux

NixOS

A flake containing the package is available in the project root. The flake can also be used to spin up a reproducible development shell for working on Helix.

Arch Linux

Binary packages are available on AUR:

helix-bin contains the pre-built release
helix-git builds the master branch

Build from source

git clone --recurse-submodules --shallow-submodules -j8 https://github.com/helix-editor/helix
cd helix
cargo install --path helix-term

This will install the hx binary to $HOME/.cargo/bin.

Now copy the runtime/ directory somewhere. Helix will by default look for the runtime inside the same folder as the executable, but that can be overriden via the HELIX_RUNTIME environment variable.

If you want to embed the runtime/ directory into the Helix binary you can build it with:

cargo install --path helix-term --features "embed_runtime"

Usage

Configuration

Theme

Use a custom theme by placing a theme.toml in your config directory (i.e ~/.config/helix/theme.toml). The default theme.toml can be found here, and user submitted themes here.

Styles in theme.toml are specified of in the form:

key = { fg = "#ffffff", bg = "#000000", modifiers = ["bold", "italic"] }

where name represents what you want to style, fg specifies the foreground color, bg the background color, and modifiers is a list of style modifiers. bg and modifiers can be omitted to defer to the defaults.

To specify only the foreground color:

key = "#ffffff"

if the key contains a dot '.', it must be quoted to prevent it being parsed as a dotted key.

"key.key" = "#ffffff"

Possible modifiers:

modifier
bold
dim
italic
underlined
slow_blink
rapid_blink
reversed
hidden
crossed_out

Possible keys:

key	notes
attribute
keyword
keyword.directive	preprocessor directives (#if in C)
namespace
punctuation
punctuation.delimiter
operator
special
property
variable
variable.parameter
type
type.builtin
constructor
function
function.macro
function.builtin
comment
variable.builtin
constant
constant.builtin
string
number
escape	escaped characters
label	used for lifetimes
module
ui.background
ui.linenr
ui.statusline
ui.popup
ui.window
ui.help
ui.text
ui.text.focus
ui.menu.selected
warning	LSP warning
error	LSP error
info	LSP info
hint	LSP hint

These keys match tree-sitter scopes. We half-follow the common scopes from macromates language grammars with some differences.

For a given highlight produced, styling will be determined based on the longest matching theme key. So it's enough to provide function to highlight function.macro and function.builtin as well, but you can use more specific scopes to highlight specific cases differently.

Keymap

Normal mode

Movement

Key	Description
h, Left	move left
j, Down	move down
k, Up	move up
l, Right	move right
w	move next word start
b	move previous word start
e	move next word end
t	find 'till next char
f	find next char
T	find 'till previous char
F	find previous char
Home	move to the start of the line
End	move to the end of the line
m	Jump to matching bracket
PageUp	Move page up
PageDown	Move page down
ctrl-u	Move half page up
ctrl-d	Move half page down
ctrl-i	Jump forward on the jumplist TODO: conflicts tab
ctrl-o	Jump backward on the jumplist
v	Enter select (extend) mode
g	Enter goto mode
:	Enter command mode
z	Enter view mode
ctrl-w	Enter window mode
space	Enter space mode
K	Show documentation for the item under the cursor

Changes

Key	Description
r	replace (single character change)
i	Insert before selection
a	Insert after selection (append)
I	Insert at the start of the line
A	Insert at the end of the line
o	Open new line below selection
o	Open new line above selection
u	Undo change
U	Redo change
y	Yank selection
p	Paste after selection
P	Paste before selection
>	Indent selection
<	Unindent selection
=	Format selection
d	Delete selection
c	Change selection (delete and enter insert mode)

Selection manipulation

Key	Description
s	Select all regex matches inside selections
S	Split selection into subselections on regex matches
alt-s	Split selection on newlines
;	Collapse selection onto a single cursor
alt-;	Flip selection cursor and anchor
%	Select entire file
x	Select current line
X	Extend to next line
[	Expand selection to parent syntax node TODO: pick a key
J	join lines inside selection
K	keep selections matching the regex TODO: overlapped by hover help
space	keep only the primary selection TODO: overlapped by space mode
ctrl-c	Comment/uncomment the selections

Search

TODO: The search implementation isn't ideal yet -- we don't support searching in reverse, or searching via smartcase.

Key	Description
/	Search for regex pattern
n	Select next search match
N	Add next search match to selection
*	Use current selection as the search pattern

Select / extend mode

I'm still pondering whether to keep this mode or not. It changes movement commands to extend the existing selection instead of replacing it.

NOTE: It's a bit confusing at the moment because extend hasn't been implemented for all movement commands yet.

View mode

View mode is intended for scrolling and manipulating the view without changing the selection.

Key	Description
z , c	Vertically center the line
t	Align the line to the top of the screen
b	Align the line to the bottom of the screen
m	Align the line to the middle of the screen (horizontally)
j	Scroll the view downwards
k	Scroll the view upwards

Goto mode

Jumps to various locations.

NOTE: Some of these features are only available with the LSP present.

Key	Description
g	Go to the start of the file
e	Go to the end of the file
h	Go to the start of the line
l	Go to the end of the line
t	Go to the top of the screen
m	Go to the middle of the screen
b	Go to the bottom of the screen
d	Go to definition
y	Go to type definition
r	Go to references
i	Go to implementation

Object mode

TODO: Mappings for selecting syntax nodes (a superset of [).

Window mode

This layer is similar to vim keybindings as kakoune does not support window.

Key	Description
w, ctrl-w	Switch to next window
v, ctrl-v	Vertical right split
h, ctrl-h	Horizontal bottom split
q, ctrl-q	Close current window

Space mode

This layer is a kludge of mappings I had under leader key in neovim.

Key	Description
f	Open file picker
b	Open buffer picker
w	Save changes to file
space	Keep primary selection TODO: it's here because space mode replaced it