# Helix 128 Hacker News commenters recommended Helix and 42 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 2 years (11 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** A snappy terminal editor that works well out of the box, with selection-first editing, multi-cursor and on-screen key hints, though critics cite slow-moving maintainers and no plugin system. ## Why people recommend it - Great defaults, no configuration needed (9 comments): "I like how helix is more discoverable (pop up context menu), has sane/great defaults and out of the box experience" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45792013)) "Helix gets enough right out of the box I find myself reaching for it far more than I ever did with vi or Emacs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46288165)) "Helix is fantastic OOTB and I have considerable muscle memory in it, but the pace of development is glacial" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49358160)) - Selection-first editing and multi-cursor (5 comments): "For example, I regularly pipe the result of ls, grep or fd into Helix then use multicursor editing to set up a script." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48871403)) "It is my default editor, never really got the hang of Vim and I quite like Helix's Selection -> Action system." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46314152)) "Love the default motions so much more, and having multi-cursor adds so much to the day to day experience." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48119575)) - Discoverable on-screen keybinding hints (4 comments): "I like how helix is more discoverable (pop up context menu), has sane/great defaults and out of the box experience" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45792013)) "Many of the key-bindings display an unobtrusive list of follow-up actions that close without any lag" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45786678)) "it shows you the list of possible next keypresses every time you press the first key in a combo" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49482465)) - Fast and snappy (3 comments): "My default editor for the past couple years. Love the simplicity, speed, and the fact I can navigate comfortably with just the keyboard." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47285337)) "Incredibly snappy and minimalistic but still having every feature a serious IDE needs, out of the box." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47289157)) "I generally feel a lot more productive (especially in Nix/Go) with added responsiveness" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47618278)) ## What people warn about - Slow development, contributions rejected (6 comments): "Helix is fantastic OOTB and I have considerable muscle memory in it, but the pace of development is glacial" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49358160)) "The helix maintainers have a track record of giving very slow "no"s and wasting contributor time." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45786783)) "The maintainers don't seem to have any aptitude for coordinating engineering effort." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45786215)) - No plugin system, missing features (3 comments): "They decided on an obscure Lisp flavor as the language (instead of WASM), so I don't hold my breath for a powerful plugin system" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45789272)) "if features like that didn’t materialize yet, that sounds like sufficient impetus for a fork to me." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50143949)) "i feel its half baked without a plugin system and tons of basic functionality missing." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49352858)) - Clashes with Vim muscle memory (2 comments): "it introduces subtle (and meaningful - I have to admit) variations, which unfortunately wreaks havoc with my muscle memory" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47284377)) "I tried it out for a few days, and I cannot justify spending time on this when I am already very productive with vim/VSCodeVim." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47288687)) - Large install size (2 comments): "Why do we need to have 40MB of Verilog grammars on disk when 99% of people don't use them?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47285672)) "Even a release build is several hundred megabytes in size, which I find pretty wasteful." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47284780)) ## 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, "Helix", https://hackerapproved.com/p/helix/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).