Configuration

To override global configuration parameters, create a config.toml file located in your config directory:

• Linux and Mac: ~/.config/helix/config.toml
• Windows: %AppData%\helix\config.toml

💡 You can easily open the config file by typing :config-open within Helix normal mode.

Example config:

theme = "onedark"

[editor]
line-number = "relative"
mouse = false

[editor.cursor-shape]
insert = "bar"
normal = "block"
select = "underline"

[editor.file-picker]
hidden = false

You can use a custom configuration file by specifying it with the -c or --config command line argument, for example hx -c path/to/custom-config.toml. Additionally, you can reload the configuration file by sending the USR1 signal to the Helix process on Unix operating systems, such as by using the command pkill -USR1 hx.

Finally, you can have a config.toml local to a project by putting it under a .helix directory in your repository. Its settings will be merged with the configuration directory config.toml and the built-in configuration.

Editor

[editor] Section

[editor.statusline] Section

Allows configuring the statusline at the bottom of the editor.

The configuration distinguishes between three areas of the status line:

[ ... ... LEFT ... ... | ... ... ... ... CENTER ... ... ... ... | ... ... RIGHT ... ... ]

Statusline elements can be defined as follows:

[editor.statusline]
left = ["mode", "spinner"]
center = ["file-name"]
right = ["diagnostics", "selections", "position", "file-encoding", "file-line-ending", "file-type"]
separator = "│"
mode.normal = "NORMAL"
mode.insert = "INSERT"
mode.select = "SELECT"

The [editor.statusline] key takes the following sub-keys:

The following statusline elements can be configured:

[editor.lsp] Section

[editor.cursor-shape] Section

Defines the shape of cursor in each mode. Valid values for these options are block, bar, underline, or hidden.

💡 Due to limitations of the terminal environment, only the primary cursor can change shape.

[editor.file-picker] Section

Set options for file picker and global search. Ignoring a file means it is not visible in the Helix file picker and global search.

All git related options are only enabled in a git repository.

Ignore files can be placed locally as .ignore or put in your home directory as ~/.ignore. They support the usual ignore and negative ignore (unignore) rules used in .gitignore files.

Additionally, you can use Helix-specific ignore files by creating a local .helix/ignore file in the current workspace or a global ignore file located in your Helix config directory:

• Linux and Mac: ~/.config/helix/ignore
• Windows: %AppData%\helix\ignore

Example:

# unignore in file picker and global search
!.github/
!.gitignore
!.gitattributes

[editor.auto-pairs] Section

Enables automatic insertion of pairs to parentheses, brackets, etc. Can be a simple boolean value, or a specific mapping of pairs of single characters.

To disable auto-pairs altogether, set auto-pairs to false:

[editor]
auto-pairs = false # defaults to `true`

The default pairs are (){}[]''""``, but these can be customized by setting auto-pairs to a TOML table:

[editor.auto-pairs]
'(' = ')'
'{' = '}'
'[' = ']'
'"' = '"'
'`' = '`'
'<' = '>'

Additionally, this setting can be used in a language config. Unless the editor setting is false, this will override the editor config in documents with this language.

Example languages.toml that adds <> and removes ''

[[language]]
name = "rust"

[language.auto-pairs]
'(' = ')'
'{' = '}'
'[' = ']'
'"' = '"'
'`' = '`'
'<' = '>'

[editor.search] Section

Search specific options.

[editor.whitespace] Section

Options for rendering whitespace with visible characters. Use :set whitespace.render all to temporarily enable visible whitespace.

Example

[editor.whitespace]
render = "all"
# or control each character
[editor.whitespace.render]
space = "all"
tab = "all"
newline = "none"

[editor.whitespace.characters]
space = "·"
nbsp = "⍽"
tab = "→"
newline = "⏎"
tabpad = "·" # Tabs will look like "→···" (depending on tab width)

[editor.indent-guides] Section

Options for rendering vertical indent guides.

Example:

[editor.indent-guides]
render = true
character = "╎" # Some characters that work well: "▏", "┆", "┊", "⸽"
skip-levels = 1

[editor.gutters] Section

For simplicity, editor.gutters accepts an array of gutter types, which will use default settings for all gutter components.

[editor]
gutters = ["diff", "diagnostics", "line-numbers", "spacer"]

To customize the behavior of gutters, the [editor.gutters] section must be used. This section contains top level settings, as well as settings for specific gutter components as subsections.

Example:

[editor.gutters]
layout = ["diff", "diagnostics", "line-numbers", "spacer"]

[editor.gutters.line-numbers] Section

Options for the line number gutter

Example:

[editor.gutters.line-numbers]
min-width = 1

[editor.gutters.diagnostics] Section

Currently unused

[editor.gutters.diff] Section

The diff gutter option displays colored bars indicating whether a git diff represents that a line was added, removed or changed. These colors are controlled by the theme attributes diff.plus, diff.minus and diff.delta.

Other diff providers will eventually be supported by a future plugin system.

There are currently no options for this section.

[editor.gutters.spacer] Section

Currently unused

[editor.soft-wrap] Section

Options for soft wrapping lines that exceed the view width:

Example:

[editor.soft-wrap]
enable = true
max-wrap = 25 # increase value to reduce forced mid-word wrapping
max-indent-retain = 0
wrap-indicator = ""  # set wrap-indicator to "" to hide it

[editor.smart-tab] Section