Best of Zed — February 2026

1. 1
   Article

   Zed·14w

   Introducing Theme Builder — Zed's Blog

   Zed launches Theme Builder, a visual editor for creating custom editor themes without editing JSON. The tool features live preview, an inspector to identify which tokens control specific UI elements, color linking to maintain consistency across related elements, and Tree-sitter-powered syntax highlighting that matches Zed exactly. Users can import existing themes, make changes with instant visual feedback, and export as theme overrides or extensions. The interface uses CSS custom properties for instant updates and includes undo/redo support with local storage persistence.

   99

   5
2. 2
   Article

   Zed·14w

   Split Diffs are Here — Zed's Blog

   Zed v0.224 ships split diff view as the new default, showing base code on the left and working copy on the right in synchronized scroll. Built on Zed's multibuffer architecture, the feature required solving two core challenges: keeping both sides vertically aligned across all changed files simultaneously, and maintaining performance at scale. Alignment is handled via a block map that inserts visual spacers between lines. Performance profiling uncovered broader wins including block map inefficiencies that sped up project search, and a macOS process spawning fix (switching from fork/exec to posix_spawn) that reduced main thread hangs from git blame and other external processes. Users can revert to unified diffs via the Diff View Style setting.

   73

   7