helix-plus/book/src/install.md

Installing Helix

• Pre-built binaries
• Linux, macOS, Windows and OpenBSD packaging status
• Linux
  • Ubuntu
  • Fedora/RHEL
  • Arch Linux community
  • NixOS
  • AppImage
• macOS
  • Homebrew Core
• Windows
  • Scoop
  • Chocolatey
  • MSYS2
• Building from source
  • Configuring Helix's runtime files
  • Validating the installation
  • Configure the desktop shortcut

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

Helix is available for Linux, macOS and Windows via the official repositories listed below.

Linux

The following third party repositories are available:

Ubuntu

Helix is available via Maveonair's PPA:

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

Fedora/RHEL

Helix is available via copr:

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 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.

AppImage

Install Helix using AppImage. Download 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 Scoop, Chocolatey or MSYS2.

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

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/helix-editor/helix
cd helix

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. To build the tree-sitter grammars requires a c++ compiler to be installed, for example gcc-c++.

💡 If you are using the musl-libc 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"

💡 Tree-sitter grammars can be fetched and compiled if not pre-packaged. Fetch grammars with hx --grammar fetch (requires git) and compile them with hx --grammar build (requires a C++ compiler). 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 -s $PWD/runtime ~/.config/helix/runtime

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:

Method	Command
PowerShell	New-Item -ItemType Junction -Target "runtime" -Path "$Env:AppData\helix\runtime"
Cmd	cd %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