A Walkthrough on Helix — A Post-Modern Modal Text Editor
This article is part of the Helix series.
Getting Started
The classical learning curve for Vim/Neovim is daunting for beginners. Besides that, to make Vim/Neovim usable for coding, a considerable amount of time is also required to configure the editor. Helix comes in as a good alternative for beginners.
Helix is a Kakoune/Neovim-inspired editor, written in Rust. It comes pre-configured with sensible defaults that feature
- Vim-like modal editing
- Multiple selections
- Built-in language server support
- Smart, incremental syntax highlighting and code editing via tree-sitter
Installation
For installation, Helix provides pre-built binaries. Alternatively, we can build it from the source.
Configuration
Helix can be configured using the config.toml file in the following location.
- Linux and Mac:
~/.config/helix/config.toml - Windows:
%AppData%\helix\config.toml
We can open the config file easily by typing :config-open within Helix's normal mode.
Tutorial
Similar to Vim Tutor, Helix provides a tutorial that can be assessed by typing the command :tutor.
Themes
By default, Helix is bundled with popular themes like gruvbox, tokyonight, dracula, everforest, github, catppucin, and many other themes.
We can use the :theme command to change the theme.
