To install Helix, follow the instructions specific to your operating system.
Note that:
-
To get the latest nightly version of Helix, you need to
build from source.
-
To take full advantage of Helix, install the language servers for your
preferred programming languages. See the
wiki
for instructions.
Download pre-built binaries from the
GitHub Releases page. Add the binary to your system's $PATH to use it from the command
line.
The following third party repositories are available:
Add the PPA for Helix:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:maveonair/helix-editor
sudo apt update
sudo apt install helix
Enable the COPR repository for Helix:
sudo dnf copr enable varlad/helix
sudo dnf install helix
Releases are available in the extra repository:
Additionally, a helix-git package is available
in the AUR, which builds the master branch.
Helix is available in nixpkgs through the helix attribute,
the unstable channel usually carries the latest release.
Helix is also available as a flake in the project
root. Use nix develop to spin up a reproducible development shell. Outputs are
cached for each push to master using Cachix. The
flake is configured to automatically make use of this cache assuming the user
accepts the new settings on first use.
If you are using a version of Nix without flakes enabled,
install Cachix CLI and use
cachix use helix to configure Nix to use cached outputs when possible.
Helix is available on Flathub:
flatpak install flathub com.helix_editor.Helix
flatpak run com.helix_editor.Helix
Install Helix using the Linux AppImage format.
Download the official Helix AppImage from the latest releases page.
chmod +x helix-*.AppImage # change permission for executable mode
./helix-*.AppImage # run helix
Install on Windows using Winget, Scoop, Chocolatey
or MSYS2.
Windows Package Manager winget command-line tool is by default available on Windows 11 and modern versions of Windows 10 as a part of the App Installer.
You can get App Installer from the Microsoft Store. If it's already installed, make sure it is updated with the latest version.
winget install Helix.Helix
For 64-bit Windows 8.1 or above:
pacman -S mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-helix
Requirements:
Clone the Helix GitHub repository into a directory of your choice. The
examples in this documentation assume installation into either ~/src/ on
Linux and macOS, or %userprofile%\src\ on Windows.
If you are using the musl-libc standard library instead of glibc the following environment variable must be set during the build to ensure tree-sitter grammars can be loaded correctly:
RUSTFLAGS="-C target-feature=-crt-static"
- Clone the repository:
sh
git clone https://github.com/helix-editor/helix
cd helix
- Compile from source:
sh
cargo install --path helix-term --locked
This command will create the hx executable and construct the tree-sitter
grammars in the local runtime folder.
💡 Tree-sitter grammars can be fetched and compiled if not pre-packaged. Fetch
grammars with hx --grammar fetch and compile them with
hx --grammar build. This will install them in
the runtime directory within the user's helix config directory (more
details below).
The runtime directory is one below the Helix source, so either set a
HELIX_RUNTIME environment variable to point to that directory and add it to
your ~/.bashrc or equivalent:
HELIX_RUNTIME=~/src/helix/runtime
Or, create a symbolic link:
ln -Ts $PWD/runtime ~/.config/helix/runtime
If the above command fails to create a symbolic link because the file exists either move ~/.config/helix/runtime to a new location or delete it, then run the symlink command above again.
Either set the HELIX_RUNTIME environment variable to point to the runtime files using the Windows setting (search for
Edit environment variables for your account) or use the setx command in
Cmd:
setx HELIX_RUNTIME "%userprofile%\source\repos\helix\runtime"
💡 %userprofile% resolves to your user directory like
C:\Users\Your-Name\ for example.
Or, create a symlink in %appdata%\helix\ that links to the source code directory:
| Method |
Command |
| PowerShell |
New-Item -ItemType Junction -Target "runtime" -Path "$Env:AppData\helix\runtime" |
| Cmd |
cd %appdata%\helix
mklink /D runtime "%userprofile%\src\helix\runtime" |
💡 On Windows, creating a symbolic link may require running PowerShell or
Cmd as an administrator.
When Helix finds multiple runtime directories it will search through them for files in the
following order:
runtime/ sibling directory to $CARGO_MANIFEST_DIR directory (this is intended for
developing and testing helix only).runtime/ subdirectory of OS-dependent helix user config directory.$HELIX_RUNTIME.runtime/ subdirectory of path to Helix executable.
This order also sets the priority for selecting which file will be used if multiple runtime
directories have files with the same name.
To make sure everything is set up as expected you should run the Helix health
check:
For more information on the health check results refer to
Health check.
If your desktop environment supports the
XDG desktop menu
you can configure Helix to show up in the application menu by copying the
provided .desktop and icon files to their correct folders:
cp contrib/Helix.desktop ~/.local/share/applications
cp contrib/helix.png ~/.icons # or ~/.local/share/icons
To use another terminal than the system default, you can modify the .desktop
file. For example, to use kitty:
sed -i "s|Exec=hx %F|Exec=kitty hx %F|g" ~/.local/share/applications/Helix.desktop
sed -i "s|Terminal=true|Terminal=false|g" ~/.local/share/applications/Helix.desktop