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Are people really happy with zed or is this the vocal minority we see on HN? I have tried zed multiple times and always uninstalled it after a few days because

Are people really happy with zed or is this the vocal minority we see on HN? I have tried zed multiple times and always uninstalled it after a few days because of the ugly font rendering, slow response time (!), high memory usage (!!) and being very buggy in general. And don't even get me started on their AI-first shenanigans. This is on Linux, maybe it works better on other platforms.

Hamuko 8mo ago
I find it okay on macOS. Font rendering isn't the best but palatable.
keyle 8mo ago
It used to be the best. Straight to the point, simple, great settings.
ramon156 8mo ago
I'm very happy with zed if I have to compare it to any intellij product If you're using Windows (+ WSL) then yes, there's a hunch of memory issues currently. Apart from Windows I've never issues though, especially seeing as how intellij indexing takes >1 min and hogs my memory during that period. The only reason I'm not switching is because Zed's vim bindings are aaalmost perfect. I did not like Vim Mode in VSC or intellij IDE's since it's another keymap I have to learn next to my nvim setup
- throwa356262 8mo ago
  No, I had issues on native Linux. At one point it used 4x available memory and brought down the entire system. Maybe this is a vim thing? What do emacs and vscode users feel about zed?
feverzsj 8mo ago
Because it's the only good free IDE for rust.
- himata4113 8mo ago
  neovim works just as good... as long as you ask AI to set it up for you.
criticalfault 8mo ago
if you would say you are writing about zed, I'd think you were writing about vscode. I can't believe the latency of browser based editor is acceptable to people
- criticalfault 8mo ago
  *wouldn't have said
serial_dev 8mo ago
Same experience, I heard about them in some podcasts, it all sounded good, performance, from the ground up, rust, collaboration, whatever. Tried it, it was the worse experience I had with an editor since I started my career… then I tried it again because maybe they figured it out… it’s still bad.
dutchCourage 8mo ago
I've been trying it out on MacOS for the past couple of weeks and I'm happy with it. I have a fairly vanilla use of my code editors and I find Zed snappier than VSCode. I have not experienced the issues you describe.
bestest 8mo ago
Same. MacOS. Tried it. Was okay-ish for several days. But eventually I realised it's worse than WebStorm in basically every aspect, subjectively speaking. It is slow, it's missing features and it is buggy.
jasonsb 8mo ago
[dead]
KingOfCoders 8mo ago
I initially loved Zed because it was so much snappier than VSCode/Cursor, but running several Zed instances made my Ryzen/32gb machine unusable together with Claude because Zed seems such a memory hog. Not using it currently anymore. (Win11)
rothific 8mo ago
Personally I love it. It just feels fast and minimal. I'm on Mac.
tecoholic 8mo ago
I have done the same multiple times. But for the last 3 months or so. I haven’t touched anything else (well nvim for quick code browsing, but not as editor). I think that might be around the time they fixed the font rendering on Linux. It’s good. Launches from anywhere from cli with just ‘zed .’ (No logs and artifacts that hold up the terminal). Multiple instances without worry (unlike PyCharm I used before). It’s good to the point I keep checking to see if there is a “pro” plan, but there isn’t. They just have AI subscriptions.
tuzemec 8mo ago
Went to Zed from Sublime and never looked back (I'm on Mac). Never touched VSCode apart of small tests to see that the project setting (format on save, etc) will work for my colleagues. Can't stand it. I have opened at all times at least 3-4 medium sized front-end projects and at least one large python project and never had memory issues.
pyr0hu 8mo ago
the only time it's using high memory usage if the project runs like 3-4 LSP's. then it's pretty slow, yes.
roughly 8mo ago
I’m on a mac - I’ve been poking at zed a bit and it’s… fine? I was a die hard Textmate user, but that’s not just dead but decayed at this point, and I’ve yet to find anything as good.
bigstrat2003 8mo ago
I tried Zed. It's alright. Unfortunately the devs think it's ok to download and run extra software without asking me (specifically node.js but it would be bad no matter what the software was). I am not willing to use software where the developers have such a cavalier approach to the user's PC, so I went back to Sublime.
steve_adams_86 8mo ago
I've been using it daily for about a year now. I love it. Using most other IDEs feels like a major regression. Multi-buffers are beautifully implemented. I typically use Claude Code if I use an LLM, but their Claude integration is excellent. Debugging is good. I'd love to see integrated test runners. I also wish the collaboration was more relevant and fleshed out, but no one I know uses it anyway.
TranquilMarmot 8mo ago
I've been using it as a replacement for VSCode/Cursor for the past few months and really like it. There have been recent changes to the font rendering, it now looks good on my 1440p monitor - when I first tried, it was blurry and instantly gave me a headache. It does seem strange to me that *font rendering* of all things is what a text editor has trouble with. Precise font rendering should be table stakes here. As for performance/memory usage, it's been top-notch for me on both Linux and macOS. I had originally switched to try and get away from Microsoft's "only focus on AI features" trend in VSCode, but it seems like Zed has fallen into the same trap.
fatata123 8mo ago
[dead]
bpev 7mo ago
I haven't had this experience (on macOS, it is quite fast), but I have read this exact same complaint about rendering/slowness from other Linux users a handful of times. So I think those might be more platform-specific issues. I do see high memory usage, though. So I enjoy using Zed when I want to use AI, and prefer Sublime when I want to fly solo.
hu3 7mo ago
To me it's just a Sublime with AI. Except Sublime doesn't eat my RAM. Very fast but not enough features to use on a daily basis. And they lack some extensions I love in VSCode such as Markdown All In One and GitLens. They have a big battle against the large ecosystem of VSCode extensions. And then there's JetBrains which is on another level of refactoring/features.
nickalekhine 7mo ago
I agree there are really noticeable issues on Linux. For example, closing file windows is shockingly slow. I'm talking like 500ms+ to close on a high end Ubuntu machine. The macOS version is where they've invested the most optimizations for sure. None of the issues you've described occur on there. Fwiw, I've been daily driving the editor on my mac for about a year with almost no complaints.

Hamuko 8mo ago

I find it okay on macOS. Font rendering isn't the best but palatable.

keyle 8mo ago

It used to be the best. Straight to the point, simple, great settings.

ramon156 8mo ago

I'm very happy with zed if I have to compare it to any intellij product If you're using Windows (+ WSL) then yes, there's a hunch of memory issues currently. Apart from Windows I've never issues though, especially seeing as how intellij indexing takes >1 min and hogs my memory during that period. The only reason I'm not switching is because Zed's vim bindings are aaalmost perfect. I did not like Vim Mode in VSC or intellij IDE's since it's another keymap I have to learn next to my nvim setup

throwa356262 8mo ago
No, I had issues on native Linux. At one point it used 4x available memory and brought down the entire system. Maybe this is a vim thing? What do emacs and vscode users feel about zed?

feverzsj 8mo ago

Because it's the only good free IDE for rust.

himata4113 8mo ago
neovim works just as good... as long as you ask AI to set it up for you.

criticalfault 8mo ago

if you would say you are writing about zed, I'd think you were writing about vscode. I can't believe the latency of browser based editor is acceptable to people

criticalfault 8mo ago
*wouldn't have said

serial_dev 8mo ago

Same experience, I heard about them in some podcasts, it all sounded good, performance, from the ground up, rust, collaboration, whatever. Tried it, it was the worse experience I had with an editor since I started my career… then I tried it again because maybe they figured it out… it’s still bad.

dutchCourage 8mo ago

I've been trying it out on MacOS for the past couple of weeks and I'm happy with it. I have a fairly vanilla use of my code editors and I find Zed snappier than VSCode. I have not experienced the issues you describe.

bestest 8mo ago

Same. MacOS. Tried it. Was okay-ish for several days. But eventually I realised it's worse than WebStorm in basically every aspect, subjectively speaking. It is slow, it's missing features and it is buggy.

jasonsb 8mo ago

[dead]

KingOfCoders 8mo ago

I initially loved Zed because it was so much snappier than VSCode/Cursor, but running several Zed instances made my Ryzen/32gb machine unusable together with Claude because Zed seems such a memory hog. Not using it currently anymore. (Win11)

rothific 8mo ago

Personally I love it. It just feels fast and minimal. I'm on Mac.

tecoholic 8mo ago

I have done the same multiple times. But for the last 3 months or so. I haven’t touched anything else (well nvim for quick code browsing, but not as editor). I think that might be around the time they fixed the font rendering on Linux. It’s good. Launches from anywhere from cli with just ‘zed .’ (No logs and artifacts that hold up the terminal). Multiple instances without worry (unlike PyCharm I used before). It’s good to the point I keep checking to see if there is a “pro” plan, but there isn’t. They just have AI subscriptions.

tuzemec 8mo ago

Went to Zed from Sublime and never looked back (I'm on Mac). Never touched VSCode apart of small tests to see that the project setting (format on save, etc) will work for my colleagues. Can't stand it. I have opened at all times at least 3-4 medium sized front-end projects and at least one large python project and never had memory issues.

pyr0hu 8mo ago

the only time it's using high memory usage if the project runs like 3-4 LSP's. then it's pretty slow, yes.

roughly 8mo ago

I’m on a mac - I’ve been poking at zed a bit and it’s… fine? I was a die hard Textmate user, but that’s not just dead but decayed at this point, and I’ve yet to find anything as good.

bigstrat2003 8mo ago

I tried Zed. It's alright. Unfortunately the devs think it's ok to download and run extra software without asking me (specifically node.js but it would be bad no matter what the software was). I am not willing to use software where the developers have such a cavalier approach to the user's PC, so I went back to Sublime.

steve_adams_86 8mo ago

I've been using it daily for about a year now. I love it. Using most other IDEs feels like a major regression. Multi-buffers are beautifully implemented. I typically use Claude Code if I use an LLM, but their Claude integration is excellent. Debugging is good. I'd love to see integrated test runners. I also wish the collaboration was more relevant and fleshed out, but no one I know uses it anyway.

TranquilMarmot 8mo ago

I've been using it as a replacement for VSCode/Cursor for the past few months and really like it. There have been recent changes to the font rendering, it now looks good on my 1440p monitor - when I first tried, it was blurry and instantly gave me a headache. It does seem strange to me that *font rendering* of all things is what a text editor has trouble with. Precise font rendering should be table stakes here. As for performance/memory usage, it's been top-notch for me on both Linux and macOS. I had originally switched to try and get away from Microsoft's "only focus on AI features" trend in VSCode, but it seems like Zed has fallen into the same trap.

fatata123 8mo ago

[dead]

bpev 7mo ago

I haven't had this experience (on macOS, it is quite fast), but I have read this exact same complaint about rendering/slowness from other Linux users a handful of times. So I think those might be more platform-specific issues. I do see high memory usage, though. So I enjoy using Zed when I want to use AI, and prefer Sublime when I want to fly solo.

hu3 7mo ago

To me it's just a Sublime with AI. Except Sublime doesn't eat my RAM. Very fast but not enough features to use on a daily basis. And they lack some extensions I love in VSCode such as Markdown All In One and GitLens. They have a big battle against the large ecosystem of VSCode extensions. And then there's JetBrains which is on another level of refactoring/features.

nickalekhine 7mo ago

I agree there are really noticeable issues on Linux. For example, closing file windows is shockingly slow. I'm talking like 500ms+ to close on a high end Ubuntu machine. The macOS version is where they've invested the most optimizations for sure. None of the issues you've described occur on there. Fwiw, I've been daily driving the editor on my mac for about a year with almost no complaints.