# Gram editor

25 Hacker News commenters recommended Gram editor and 1 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 9 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** People recommend Gram as a Zed fork with the terms of service, telemetry and AI removed, leaving a fast text editor. Some dependencies remain.

## Why people recommend it

- Removes AI, telemetry and terms of service (6 comments): "It does come with all the drawbacks of disabling AI, telemetry, phone-home and attempting to protect your privacy." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47960100)) "Gram is a hard fork that removes the TOS, telemetry and AI, and turns Zed into just a text editor." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47240409)) "It strips all the weird parts and leaves just the editor." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47960831))
- Lightweight, fast editor (4 comments): "It strips all the weird parts and leaves just the editor." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47960831)) "Thanks for the link of this unbloated version of Zed." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47260267)) "it worked well as a low-spec devbox" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49832579))
- Actively maintained and sensible (3 comments): "Someone actually sensible, excellent." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48494660)) "Oh, that's a breath of fresh air." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48494020)) "It's actively maintained." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49194217))
- Fixes annoyances with Zed (2 comments): "Looks like it fixes all of my annoyances with Zed; I'll have to try it out." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48494409)) "The Gram fork of Zed is pretty good, though." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49789135))

## What people warn about

- Still has some dependencies (1 comments): "still has some dependencies I'd rather not deal with" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49122762))
- Few people use it (1 comments): "BUT it cant be interpreted or aligned <- this is why no one uses it and no one talks about it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48313213))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Zed](https://hackerapproved.com/p/zed.md): 700 recommend
- [GNU Emacs](https://hackerapproved.com/p/emacs.md): 648 recommend
- [Vim](https://hackerapproved.com/p/vim.md): 513 recommend
- [Visual Studio Code](https://hackerapproved.com/p/visual-studio-code.md): 485 recommend
- [Neovim](https://hackerapproved.com/p/neovim.md): 295 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Gram editor", https://hackerapproved.com/p/gram/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).