Installation

To install Helix, follow the instructions specific to your operating system and package manager.

Package Managers

Linux

Ubuntu

Add the PPA for Helix:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:maveonair/helix-editor && \
sudo apt update && \
sudo apt install helix

Fedora

sudo dnf install helix

Arch

Releases are available in the extra repository:

sudo pacman -S helix

Note

When installed from the extra repository, run Helix with helix instead of hx.

For example, to check the health:

helix --health

Additionally, a helix-git ↗ package is available in the AUR, which builds the latest master branch.

Nix

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.

Flatpak

Helix is available on Flathub ↗:

flatpak install flathub com.helix_editor.Helix && \
flatpak run com.helix_editor.Helix

Snap

Helix is available on Snapcraft ↗:

snap install --classic helix

This will install Helix as both /snap/bin/helix and /snap/bin/hx, so make sure /snap/bin is in your $PATH!

AppImage

Install Helix using the Linux AppImage ↗ format by downloading the official Helix AppImage from the latest releases ↗ page.

# change permission for executable mode and run helix
chmod +x helix-*.AppImage && \
./helix-*.AppImage

MacOS

Homebrew

brew install helix

MacPorts

port install helix

Windows

Winget

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

Scoop

scoop install helix

Chocolatey

choco install helix

MSYS2

pacman -S mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-helix

Pre-built binaries

Download pre-built binaries from the GitHub Releases page ↗.

1. Add the hx binary to your system’s $PATH to use it from the command line.

2. Copy the runtime directory into the config directory:

   • ~/.config/helix/runtime on Linux and MacOS
   • %appdata%\helix\runtime on Windows

Tip

You can override the runtime location with the HELIX_RUNTIME environment variable.

Building from source

To get the latest features in the Helix editor, you need to build from source from the master branch.

Requirements

• The Rust toolchain ↗
• The Git version control system ↗
• A C++14 compatible compiler to build the tree-sitter grammars, for example GCC or Clang

Note

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:

Linux and macOS

export RUSTFLAGS="-C target-feature=-crt-static"

Windows

set RUSTFLAGS "-C target-feature=-crt-static"

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/helix-editor/helix && \
   cd helix

   The examples in this documentation assume installationinto either:

   • ~/src/ on Linux and macOS
   • %userprofile%\src\ on Windows

2. Compile from source:

   cargo install --path helix-term --locked

   This command will create the hx executable and construct the tree-sitter grammars in the local runtime folder.

Tip

If you do not want to fetch or build grammars, set an environment variable HELIX_DISABLE_AUTO_GRAMMAR_BUILD.

Linux and macOS

export HELIX_DISABLE_AUTO_GRAMMAR_BUILD=1

Windows

set HELIX_DISABLE_AUTO_GRAMMAR_BUILD 1

---

Tree-sitter grammars can be fetched and compiled if not pre-packaged:

• hx --grammar fetch fetches the grammars.
• hx --grammar build compiles them.

This will install them in the runtime directory within the user’s helix config directory (more details below).

Configuring Helix’s runtime files

Linux and macOS

The runtime directory is one below the Helix source, so either export a HELIX_RUNTIME environment variable to point to that directory and add it to your ~/.bashrc or equivalent:

export 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.

Windows

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"

Note

%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"

Note

On Windows, creating a symbolic link may require running PowerShell or Command Prompt as an administrator.

Multiple runtime directories

When Helix finds multiple runtime directories it will search through them for files in the following order:

1. runtime/ sibling directory to $CARGO_MANIFEST_DIR directory (this is intended for developing and testing helix only).
2. runtime/ subdirectory of OS-dependent helix user config directory.
3. HELIX_RUNTIME environment variable.
4. Distribution-specific fallback directory (set at compile time—not run time— with the HELIX_DEFAULT_RUNTIME environment variable)
5. 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.

Note to packagers

If you are making a package of Helix for end users, to provide a good out of the box experience, you should set the HELIX_DEFAULT_RUNTIME environment variable at build time (before invoking cargo build) to a directory which will store the final runtime files after installation.

For example, say you wantto package the runtime into /usr/lib/helix/runtime. The rough steps a build script could follow are:

Linux and macOS

1. Set the default runtime environment variable

   export HELIX_DEFAULT_RUNTIME=/usr/lib/helix/runtime

2. Build Helix with the “opt” profile

   cargo build --profile opt --locked --path helix-term

3. Copy the runtime directory to the target build directory

   cp -r runtime $BUILD_DIR/usr/lib/helix/

4. Copy the built Helix executable to the target directory

   cp target/opt/hx $BUILD_DIR/usr/bin/hx

Windows

1. Set the default runtime environment variable

   set HELIX_DEFAULT_RUNTIME=C:\path\to\helix\runtime

2. Build Helix with the “opt” profile

   cargo build --profile opt --locked --path helix-term

3. Copy the runtime directory to the target build directory

   xcopy /E /I runtime %BUILD_DIR%\usr\lib\helix\

4. Copy the built Helix executable to the target directory

   copy target\opt\hx.exe %BUILD_DIR%\usr\bin\hx.exe

This way the resulting hx binary will always look for its runtime directory in /usr/lib/helix/runtime if the user has no custom runtime in ~/.config/helix or HELIX_RUNTIME.

Validating the installation

To make sure everything is set up as expected you should run the Helix health check:

hx --health

For more information on the health check results refer to Health check.

Configure the desktop shortcut (Linux only)

If your desktop environment supports the XDG desktop menu ↗ you can configure Helix to show up in the application menu.

1. Copy the provided .desktop and icon files to their correct folders:

   cp contrib/Helix.desktop ~/.local/share/applications && \
   cp contrib/helix.png ~/.local/share/icons

2. Convert the links in the .desktop file to absolute paths to avoid potential problems:

   sed -i -e "s|Exec=hx %F|Exec=$(readlink -f ~/.cargo/bin/hx) %F|g" \
     -e "s|Icon=helix|Icon=$(readlink -f ~/.icons/helix.png)|g" ~/.local/share/applications/Helix.desktop

To use another terminal than the system default, you can modify the .desktop file. Depending on which terminal you 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

sed -i "s|Exec=hx %F|Exec=wezterm start hx %F|g" ~/.local/share/applications/Helix.desktop && \
sed -i "s|Terminal=true|Terminal=false|g" ~/.local/share/applications/Helix.desktop

sed -i "s|Exec=hx %F|Exec=alacritty --command hx %F|g" ~/.local/share/applications/Helix.desktop && \
sed -i "s|Terminal=true|Terminal=false|g" ~/.local/share/applications/Helix.desktop

sed -i "s|Exec=hx %F|Exec=gnome-terminal hx %F|g" ~/.local/share/applications/Helix.desktop && \
sed -i "s|Terminal=true|Terminal=false|g" ~/.local/share/applications/Helix.desktop

sed -i "s|Exec=hx %F|Exec=rio -e hx %F|g" ~/.local/share/applications/Helix.desktop && \
sed -i "s|Terminal=true|Terminal=false|g" ~/.local/share/applications/Helix.desktop