Getting Started

Welcome to Zed! We are excited to have you. Here is a jumping-off point to getting started.

Download Zed

macOS

Get the latest stable builds via the download page. If you want to download our preview build, you can find it on its releases page. After the first manual installation, Zed will periodically check for install updates.

You can also install Zed stable via Homebrew:

brew install --cask zed

As well as Zed preview:

brew install --cask zed@preview

Linux

For most Linux users, the easiest way to install Zed is through our installation script:

curl -f https://zed.dev/install.sh | sh

If you'd like to help us test our new features, you can also install our preview build:

curl -f https://zed.dev/install.sh | ZED_CHANNEL=preview sh

This script supports x86_64 and AArch64, as well as common Linux distributions: Ubuntu, Arch, Debian, RedHat, CentOS, Fedora, and more.

If Zed is installed using this installation script, it can be uninstalled at any time by running the shell command zed --uninstall. The shell will then prompt you whether you'd like to keep your preferences or delete them. After making a choice, you should see a message that Zed was successfully uninstalled.

If this script is insufficient for your use case, you run into problems running Zed, or there are errors in uninstalling Zed, please see our Linux-specific documentation.

Command Palette

The Command Palette is the main way to access pretty much any functionality that's available in Zed. Its keybinding is the first one you should make yourself familiar with. To open it, hit: cmd-shift-p|ctrl-shift-p.

The opened Command Palette

Try it! Open the Command Palette and type in new file. You should see the list of commands being filtered down to workspace: new file. Hit return and you end up with a new buffer.

Any time you see instructions that include commands of the form zed: ... or editor: ... and so on that means you need to execute them in the Command Palette.

CLI

Zed has a CLI, on Linux this should come with the distribution's Zed package (binary name can vary from distribution to distribution, zed will be used later for brevity). For macOS, the CLI comes in the same package with the editor binary, and could be installed into the system with the cli: install Zed command which will create a symlink to the /usr/local/bin/zed. It can also be built from source out of the cli crate in this repository.

Use zed --help to see the full list of capabilities. General highlights:

  • Opening another empty Zed window: zed

  • Opening a file or directory in Zed: zed /path/to/entry (use -n to open in the new window)

  • Reading from stdin: ps axf | zed -

  • Starting Zed with logs in the terminal: zed --foreground

  • Uninstalling Zed and all its related files: zed --uninstall

Configure Zed

To open your custom settings to set things like fonts, formatting settings, per-language settings, and more, use the cmd-,|ctrl-, keybinding.

To see all available settings, open the Command Palette with cmd-shift-p|ctrl-shift-p and search for zed: open default settings. You can also check them all out in the Configuring Zed documentation.

Configure AI in Zed

Zed smoothly integrates LLMs in multiple ways across the editor. Visit the AI overview page to learn how to quickly get started with LLMs on Zed.

Set up your key bindings

To open your custom keymap to add your key bindings, use the cmd-k cmd-s|ctrl-k ctrl-s keybinding.

To access the default key binding set, open the Command Palette with cmd-shift-p|ctrl-shift-p and search for "zed: open default keymap". See Key Bindings for more info.