helix/book/src/configuration.md

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

Hint: 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 may also specify a file to use for configuration with the -c or --config CLI argument: hx -c path/to/custom-config.toml.

It is also possible to trigger configuration file reloading by sending the USR1 signal to the helix process, e.g. via pkill -USR1 hx. This is only supported on unix operating systems.

Editor

[editor] Section

Key	Description	Default
scrolloff	Number of lines of padding around the edge of the screen when scrolling.	5
mouse	Enable mouse mode.	true
middle-click-paste	Middle click paste support.	true
scroll-lines	Number of lines to scroll per scroll wheel step.	3
shell	Shell to use when running external commands.	Unix: ["sh", "-c"] Windows: ["cmd", "/C"]
line-number	Line number display: absolute simply shows each line's number, while relative shows the distance from the current line. When unfocused or in insert mode, relative will still show absolute line numbers.	absolute
cursorline	Highlight all lines with a cursor.	false
cursorcolumn	Highlight all columns with a cursor.	false
gutters	Gutters to display: Available are diagnostics and diff and line-numbers and spacer, note that diagnostics also includes other features like breakpoints, 1-width padding will be inserted if gutters is non-empty	["diagnostics", "spacer", "line-numbers", "spacer", "diff"]
auto-completion	Enable automatic pop up of auto-completion.	true
auto-format	Enable automatic formatting on save.	true
auto-save	Enable automatic saving on focus moving away from Helix. Requires focus event support from your terminal.	false
idle-timeout	Time in milliseconds since last keypress before idle timers trigger. Used for autocompletion, set to 0 for instant.	400
completion-trigger-len	The min-length of word under cursor to trigger autocompletion	2
auto-info	Whether to display infoboxes	true
true-color	Set to true to override automatic detection of terminal truecolor support in the event of a false negative.	false
rulers	List of column positions at which to display the rulers. Can be overridden by language specific rulers in languages.toml file.	[]
bufferline	Renders a line at the top of the editor displaying open buffers. Can be always, never or multiple (only shown if more than one buffer is in use)	never
color-modes	Whether to color the mode indicator with different colors depending on the mode itself	false

[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:

Key	Description	Default
left	A list of elements aligned to the left of the statusline	["mode", "spinner", "file-name"]
center	A list of elements aligned to the middle of the statusline	[]
right	A list of elements aligned to the right of the statusline	["diagnostics", "selections", "position", "file-encoding"]
separator	The character used to separate elements in the statusline	"│"
mode.normal	The text shown in the mode element for normal mode	"NOR"
mode.insert	The text shown in the mode element for insert mode	"INS"
mode.select	The text shown in the mode element for select mode	"SEL"

The following statusline elements can be configured:

Key	Description
mode	The current editor mode (mode.normal/mode.insert/mode.select)
spinner	A progress spinner indicating LSP activity
file-name	The path/name of the opened file
file-encoding	The encoding of the opened file if it differs from UTF-8
file-line-ending	The file line endings (CRLF or LF)
total-line-numbers	The total line numbers of the opened file
file-type	The type of the opened file
diagnostics	The number of warnings and/or errors
workspace-diagnostics	The number of warnings and/or errors on workspace
selections	The number of active selections
primary-selection-length	The number of characters currently in primary selection
position	The cursor position
position-percentage	The cursor position as a percentage of the total number of lines
separator	The string defined in editor.statusline.separator (defaults to "│")
spacer	Inserts a space between elements (multiple/contiguous spacers may be specified)

[editor.lsp] Section

Key	Description	Default
display-messages	Display LSP progress messages below statusline1	false
auto-signature-help	Enable automatic popup of signature help (parameter hints)	true
display-signature-help-docs	Display docs under signature help popup	true

[editor.cursor-shape] Section

Defines the shape of cursor in each mode. Note that due to limitations of the terminal environment, only the primary cursor can change shape. Valid values for these options are block, bar, underline, or hidden.

Key	Description	Default
normal	Cursor shape in normal mode	block
insert	Cursor shape in insert mode	block
select	Cursor shape in select mode	block

[editor.file-picker] Section

Sets options for file picker and global search. All but the last key listed in the default file-picker configuration below are IgnoreOptions: whether hidden files and files listed within ignore files are ignored by (not visible in) the helix file picker and global search. There is also one other key, max-depth available, which is not defined by default.

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

Key	Description	Default
hidden	Enables ignoring hidden files.	true
parents	Enables reading ignore files from parent directories.	true
ignore	Enables reading .ignore files.	true
git-ignore	Enables reading .gitignore files.	true
git-global	Enables reading global .gitignore, whose path is specified in git's config: core.excludefile option.	true
git-exclude	Enables reading .git/info/exclude files.	true
max-depth	Set with an integer value for maximum depth to recurse.	Defaults to None.

[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.

Key	Description	Default
smart-case	Enable smart case regex searching (case insensitive unless pattern contains upper case characters)	true
wrap-around	Whether the search should wrap after depleting the matches	true

[editor.whitespace] Section

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

Key	Description	Default
render	Whether to render whitespace. May either be "all" or "none", or a table with sub-keys space, tab, and newline.	"none"
characters	Literal characters to use when rendering whitespace. Sub-keys may be any of tab, space, nbsp, newline or tabpad	See example below

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.

Key	Description	Default
render	Whether to render indent guides.	false
character	Literal character to use for rendering the indent guide	│
skip-levels	Number of indent levels to skip	0

Example:

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

---

1. By default, a progress spinner is shown in the statusline beside the file path. ↩︎