How I use Helix

I’m the kind of computer person that finds a good thing and sticks with it, and this has definitely been true when it comes to code editors. Vim was my daily driver for ~20 years, and I watched from the sidelines as colleagues experimented with sublime text, vscode, Jetbrains variants, atom, zed, and cursor. Not much Emacs, interestingly.

I wasn’t a big vim-tweaker though. I had a handful of well trusted plugins and a vimrc that was pretty stable. Muscle memory was strong.

In early 2025 I found myself between jobs and looking for a project. I’d never had a working Language Server Protocol (LSP) setup in vim, and it was past time to try - I was moving from a Ruby to a Typescript shop, and I knew I’d benefit from a level up in editor capability.

LSP support in vim was the obvious first stop, but in a sign I’m getting old it just felt too hard. I found myself comparing the multiple vim plugin systems, considering a full rewrite of my vimrc, and trawling through old forum sites like was installing Linux with the free time of a 21 year old.

Maybe neovim then? I tried, but it was no better. I’d have to invest days and weeks learning the lua config system and then endlessly tweak it.

I tried VSCode for a few hours, but my goodness it just felt weird coding outside the terminal. In frustration I tried a few searches for TUI editors with LSP support and found … helix. 29th most popular editor in the Stackoverflow 2024 developer survey. Modal, like vim. Similar but different key bindings.

Esoteric isn’t usually my thing, but it was available in the Debian archives so it was easy to try. 17 months later I’m still using it as my daily driver, and my muscle memory has adapted. Apparently I like it enough to write about it.

The most delightful aspect has been the sensible defaults and minimal config tweaking. It mostly … Just Works.

Here’s my ~/.config/helix/config.toml:

theme = "autumn"

[editor]

# make helix ignore the mouse, occasoinally I want to select text and just treat the terminal
# like a terminal
mouse = false

# force 24 bit colour mode, make matching brackets stand out
true-color = true
rainbow-brackets = true

# I'm no monster
trim-trailing-whitespace = true

# A vertical bar as a visual hint at wide-enough
rulers = [120]

Language specific configuration is in ~/.config/helix/languages.toml.

[language-server.ruby-lsp]
command = "ruby-lsp"
config = { diagnostics = true, formatting = true, signatureHelp = true, completion = true, rangeFormatting = true, formatter = "standard" }

[language-server.sorbet]
command = "srb"
args = ["tc", "--lsp", "--disable-watchman", "--enable-experimental-rbs-comments"]
config = { diagnostics = true, signatureHelp = true, completion = true }

[language-server.harper-ls]
command = "harper-ls"
args = ["--stdio"]

[[language]]
name = "ruby"
language-servers = ["ruby-lsp", "sorbet"]

[[language]]
name = "git-commit"
language-servers = ["harper-ls"]

[[language]]
name = "markdown"
language-servers = ["harper-ls"]

That’s it. 41 lines of configuration.

The helix team seem to protect the sensible-defaults idea closely, and are conservative about adding new features and config knobs. There are multiple open Github issues asking for integrated LLM support for example. By holding back the team skipped the short-lived LLM-as-fancy-autocomplete trend and don’t have the maintenance burden of a rarely used feature now that the zeitgeist has moved on to external LLM coding agents.

Integrated spellchecking is another often requested feature, but my config above shows how LSPs can often be used to patch these gaps.

When debugging LSP settings for a particular language, hx --health is helpful:

$ hx --health
...
<table ommitted for brevity>
...

$ hx --health ruby
Configured language servers:
  ✓ ruby-lsp: /home/jh/.rbenv/shims/ruby-lsp
  ✓ sorbet: /home/jh/.rbenv/shims/srb
Configured debug adapter: None
Configured formatter: None
Tree-sitter parser: ✓
Highlight queries: ✓
Textobject queries: ✓
Indent queries: ✓
Tags queries: ✓
Rainbow queries: ✓

… and tailing the log file when opening a file in the language can help:

$ tail -f  ~/.cache/helix/helix.log

The out-of-the-box LSP defaults for Typescript work with no custom config once typescript-language-server is on the path:

$ npm install -g typescript-language-server

$ hx --health typescript
Configured language servers:
  ✓ typescript-language-server:
/Users/jh/.nodenv/shims/typescript-language-server
Configured debug adapter: None
Configured formatter: None
Tree-sitter parser: ✓
Highlight queries: ✓
Textobject queries: ✓
Indent queries: ✓

Thanks to the helix team 💚