Frequently Asked Questions

We know that users enjoy contributing to projects like Zed. We also understand that being able to audit the codebase of a critical tool helps to establish trust in both the tool and its creators.

Our intention is to open-source the core of Zed while omitting any code related to features we aim to monetize. We may also open up Zed's documentation to allow contributions in the future.

The exact timing of when these pieces will be open to the public isn't clear to us at this point, but we will share updates as they emerge.

Currently only those invited from the waitlist can download Zed. You must either be invited from the Waitlist or be invited by an Insider. We are constantly adding waves of new Insiders from our waitlist, so hang tight! Adding people in groups allows us to continually get feedback as we develop Zed so we can build the best editor possible.

We currently don't offer a convenient way for users to log out of GitHub from within Zed. If you'd like to log out, follow these steps:

1. Open the Keychain Access application
2. In the login keychain, find and delete the https://zed.dev entry
3. Restart Zed

We're focusing on a single platform for now because we're a small team. At our current scale, maintaining additional platforms would represent a big cost without much additional learning. We plan to support Linux and Windows before 1.0, and to support a web version some time after that.

Any news will be posted to our platform-tracking issues.

While we are committed to building a stable, professional-grade editor, you'll likely run into bugs and pain points throughout the alpha and beta phases. Additionally, Zed may not support all languages you use and may not be available for your preferred operating system. What we can confidently say is that we are working hard to bring you the features, support, and stability you need to make Zed your homebase editor for building great software.

As diligent as we try to be with every line of code we write, human error is inevitable, especially during periods of rapid development. Make sure to properly backup any code you are working on in Zed to protect yourself from potential catastrophic events. While we believe Zed to be safe to use, it is always advisable to err on the side of caution in these early stages.

Language servers are stored at ~/Library/Application Support/Zed/languages. See language servers for more information.

The settings.json can be found at ~/.config/zed/settings.json. See configuring Zed for more information. The keymap.json can be found at ~/.config/zed/keymap.json. See key bindings for more information.

The last 1000 lines of Zed's log file can be opened in a Zed buffer by searching for zed: open log within the command palette. If you need to view more history, you can find the full log file at ~/Library/Logs/Zed/Zed.log.

We stopped working on Atom and started on the foundations of Zed when we realized that we couldn't shape Atom into our vision for the ultimate editor. While we respect and appreciate the innovations brought by Visual Studio Code, we never found ourselves loving it enough to give up on the dream. Ultimately, we think we're going to add the most value to the world by creating something new. It's also a lot more fun.

As the last letter of the alphabet, Zed symbolizes the ultimate in our pursuit of building the perfect editor. This is the tool we've always envisioned using, and we believe it to be the last one we will build.

We plan to make Zed extensible via WebAssembly, but we're taking a different approach than we did with Atom. Our goal is to make Zed fast, stable, and collaborative first, extensible second. We'll be taking a more conservative approach with our APIs to ensure we can preserve our core values even as users add extensions.

Yes. Zed will be free to use as a standalone editor. We will instead charge a subscription for optional features targeting teams and collaboration.

We'd like to be as open as possible while maintaining the ability to run a profitable business. This probably means some kind of "open core" model, where the editor is available under the GPL but other parts of our system remain proprietary. The timeline and exact strategy are still uncertain at this stage.

This isn't something we're worrying too much about right now, but we anticipate adding enterprise-focused features eventually.

When we started on Zed the Rust UI framework space was much younger. In absence of a mature solution that met our exact needs, the simplest path for us was to build it ourselves. We're too far into things now to change at this point. We also like our framework. It's working well for us.

All interactions between collaborators are proxied via our servers. This ensures much greater reliability than peer to peer connections and is simpler to implement. It's also important for the business we intend to build around collaboration.

If you don't authenticate, we currently send nothing to our servers.

If you are authenticated, you can still open a project in "offline mode" by clicking the lock next to your project in the contacts panel. At that point, we record the fact that you have a project open, but no other details.

If your project is online but you don't have any guests, we send the name of its root folders along with a count of files for each file extension in your project.

We currently default projects to "online mode" because we want it to be easy to collaborate for the first time, and we're worried that forcing you to take a project online adds extra friction.

You can change this by setting projects_online_by_default to false in your settings.

Currently, very little.

The only data we store in our database is the count of paths with different file extensions in a project so we can learn what kinds of projects people are editing in Zed. We store project paths in memory only during the collaboration session. All other data stays with the host and is proxied through our servers when requested by a guest.

We intend to add the ability to record editing sessions, but we'll make it clear when we do this.

Again, if your project is "offline" we will respect that and not send anything about it to our servers.

We plan to monetize optional network-based services integrated into the editor. The editor itself will be free to use.

Yes. We sold equity in our company to investors to enable ourselves to give Zed the focus it deserves.