Zed Code Editor as an Atom reincarnation

I was a big fan of the Atom¹ code editor, so when it was discontinued and replaced by M$’s VS Code², I was both sad and dissapointed. While I can admit that VS Code is a solid editor, my personal preference always leaned towards Atom.

However, over time, Atom started to feel sluggish. I collected numerous plugins over the years and it began to weigh heavily on performance, not just during startup but also during regular usage. Typing slow response was especially quite irritating.

Just recently, I stumbled upon Zed³. Built in Rust and designed with a focus on speed, Zed intrigued me with the promise of recapturing some of Atom’s essence. While it’s not quite ready to replace my heavily customized VS Code setup, I’m keeping a close eye on its development.

In conclusion, while I mourn the loss of Atom, I’m hopeful that Zed might just be the editor to reignite that same sense of joy and efficiency in coding.

To make it usable for me, I had to change few config options:

{
  "theme": "Ayu Dark", // I like Monokai, but it's not yet there
  "base_keymap": "Atom", // no need to change habbits
  "ui_font_size": 16,
  "buffer_font_size": 16,
  "auto_update": false, // I use Homebrew, so don't need that
  "autosave": "on_focus_change", // I'm lazy and get used to that
  "language_overrides": {
    "Markdown": {
      "tab_size": 2
    }
  }
}

Config is located in ~/.config/zed/settings.json, but you can also open it quickly with Cmd + , shortcut. More configuration options can be found in docs⁴.

Have fun!