#editors

I’ve been using Helix since October 22 2025, according to the commit history on my system’s Nix flake. Coming from Neovim, it wasn’t a radical change, but there are some things that Helix does right, imo:

Select-then-edit model: In the traditional Vi(m) editing model, your keybinds look like <action><selection> e.g. dw to delete the next word. Helix keybinds work in reverse i.e. <selection><action>. After using it for a while, I’m convinced that this is a much more intuitive way to edit text: being able to see what your action will affect before you do it makes for a much nicer experience.
Approach to configuration: Unlike Neovim, Helix doesn’t let you install and configure plugins. I maintained a pretty lean Neovim setup anyway, so this didn’t come as too jarring of a change to me. Helix comes with a lot of great features out of the box: LSP support, syntax highlighting with Tree-Sitter, basic Git integration, etc. Just like Fish, Helix comes with really good defaults. My config (TOML!) comes out at <45 lines: 12 for the editor itself and 30 for telling it which formatters to use. I do wish it came with a built-in file explorer though :(

The only downside so far is that editors and IDEs like Zed and IDEA don’t have great Helix keybinding support yet, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.