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. Add the binary to your system's $PATH to use it from the command line.

Linux, macOS, Windows and OpenBSD packaging status

Packaging status

Linux

The following third party repositories are available:

Ubuntu

Add the PPA for Helix:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:maveonair/helix-editor
sudo apt update
sudo apt install helix

Fedora/RHEL

Enable the COPR repository for Helix:

sudo dnf copr enable varlad/helix
sudo dnf install helix

Arch Linux community

Releases are available in the community repository:

sudo pacman -S helix

Additionally, a helix-git package is available in the AUR, which builds the master branch.

NixOS

Helix is available in nixpkgs through the helix attribute, the unstable channel usually carries the latest release.

Helix is also available as a flake in the project root. Use nix develop to spin up a reproducible development shell. Outputs are cached for each push to master using Cachix. The flake is configured to automatically make use of this cache assuming the user accepts the new settings on first use.

If you are using a version of Nix without flakes enabled, install Cachix CLI and use cachix use helix to configure Nix to use cached outputs when possible.

Flatpak

Helix is available on Flathub:

flatpak install flathub com.helix_editor.Helix
flatpak run com.helix_editor.Helix

AppImage

Install Helix using the Linux AppImage format. Download the official Helix AppImage from the latest releases page.

chmod +x helix-*.AppImage # change permission for executable mode
./helix-*.AppImage # run helix

macOS

Homebrew Core

brew install helix

Windows

Install on Windows using Winget, Scoop, Chocolatey or MSYS2.

Winget

Windows Package Manager winget command-line tool is by default available on Windows 11 and modern versions of Windows 10 as a part of the App Installer. You can get App Installer from the Microsoft Store. If it's already installed, make sure it is updated with the latest version.

winget install Helix.Helix

Scoop

scoop install helix

Chocolatey

choco install helix

MSYS2

For 64-bit Windows 8.1 or above:

pacman -S mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-helix

Building from source

Requirements:

If you are using the musl-libc standard library instead of glibc the following environment variable must be set during the build to ensure tree-sitter grammars can be loaded correctly:

RUSTFLAGS="-C target-feature=-crt-static"
  1. Clone the repository:
git clone https://github.com/helix-editor/helix
cd helix
  1. Compile from source:
cargo install --path helix-term --locked

This command will create the hx executable and construct the tree-sitter grammars in the local runtime folder.

💡 Tree-sitter grammars can be fetched and compiled if not pre-packaged. Fetch grammars with hx --grammar fetch and compile them with hx --grammar build. This will install them in the runtime directory within the user's helix config directory (more details below).

Configuring Helix's runtime files

Linux and macOS

Either set the HELIX_RUNTIME environment variable to point to the runtime files and add it to your ~/.bashrc or equivalent:

HELIX_RUNTIME=/home/user-name/src/helix/runtime

Or, create a symlink in ~/.config/helix that links to the source code directory:

ln -Ts $PWD/runtime ~/.config/helix/runtime

If the above command fails to create a symbolic link because the file exists either move ~/.config/helix/runtime to a new location or delete it, then run the symlink command above again.

Windows

Either set the HELIX_RUNTIME environment variable to point to the runtime files using the Windows setting (search for Edit environment variables for your account) or use the setx command in Cmd:

setx HELIX_RUNTIME "%userprofile%\source\repos\helix\runtime"

💡 %userprofile% resolves to your user directory like C:\Users\Your-Name\ for example.

Or, create a symlink in %appdata%\helix\ that links to the source code directory:

MethodCommand
PowerShellNew-Item -ItemType Junction -Target "runtime" -Path "$Env:AppData\helix\runtime"
Cmdcd %appdata%\helix
mklink /D runtime "%userprofile%\src\helix\runtime"

💡 On Windows, creating a symbolic link may require running PowerShell or Cmd as an administrator.

Multiple runtime directories

When Helix finds multiple runtime directories it will search through them for files in the following order:

  1. runtime/ sibling directory to $CARGO_MANIFEST_DIR directory (this is intended for developing and testing helix only).
  2. runtime/ subdirectory of OS-dependent helix user config directory.
  3. $HELIX_RUNTIME.
  4. runtime/ subdirectory of path to Helix executable.

This order also sets the priority for selecting which file will be used if multiple runtime directories have files with the same name.

Validating the installation

To make sure everything is set up as expected you should run the Helix health check:

hx --health

For more information on the health check results refer to Health check.

Configure the desktop shortcut

If your desktop environment supports the XDG desktop menu you can configure Helix to show up in the application menu by copying the provided .desktop and icon files to their correct folders:

cp contrib/Helix.desktop ~/.local/share/applications
cp contrib/helix.png ~/.icons # or ~/.local/share/icons

To use another terminal than the system default, you can modify the .desktop file. For example, to use kitty:

sed -i "s|Exec=hx %F|Exec=kitty hx %F|g" ~/.local/share/applications/Helix.desktop
sed -i "s|Terminal=true|Terminal=false|g" ~/.local/share/applications/Helix.desktop