# Zed 700 Hacker News commenters recommended Zed and 430 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 13 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 0.5 years (57 owners). **Verdict:** A fast, native Rust code editor that feels far more responsive and lighter on memory than VS Code, with optional AI agent features; expect rough edges and missing polish. ## Why people recommend it - Fast, native, not Electron (5 comments): "Zed, however, is written in Rust (i.e., not Electron), and I would guess it is at least an order of magnitude more responsive than VS Code" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45918698)) "It's a very fast and capable editor with lots of IDE features, but it's lacking comfortable ways of tuning it for specific projects." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47951065)) "Zed's value proposition is being basically that but with fully native code, so without the madness that is Electron" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47003720)) - Low memory on large repos (3 comments): "Being able to work in a large monorepo without the editor freezing and taking 15+GB of RAM was a strong selling point" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47857973)) "I abandoned VSCode for zed, because I was tired of the slow performance of VSCode and how much memory it consumes." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48176733)) "Agreed, multibuffers are such a huge QOL feature. I love being able to work across a dozen or more buffers at once with no impact on performance." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47007520)) - Open agent protocol and local models (4 comments): "Zed was first harness where you could seriously use local models. The issue is more about not having to check so many options to make sure it's all local." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48109203)) "I think that the Zed approach of having a common protocol to talk with agents (like a LSP but for agents) is much better." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45971088)) "Zed develops and pioneers ACP (Agent Client Protocol), which I can also use in other editors and with other agents." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45817353)) - Stable for daily use (3 comments): "I've been using Zed for over a year. I've had one or two crashes over that year, which is very stable for using it all day every day." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48083920)) "I've been using this "almost unusable" editor daily on both Linux and Mac for the past year and now experience no issues." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49191189)) "Zed's very handy, I find, and i'm not saying so because i'm driven to it by aversion to alternatives: it's just very useful." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49301707)) ## What people warn about - Rough edges and broken basics (3 comments): "Zed still has a lot of rough edges. A month or two ago I couldn't believe that a basic feature like code folding was just completely broken." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49493025)) "Zed's stack is pretty damn good. But like anything not yet widely used outside of its original use case, it can be rough around the edges" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45833672)) "I’m using Zed a lot as well for Golang and a bit for Rust. For Java it is also hard to use and lacking the same polish." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49018866)) - File tree misses external changes (4 comments): "failing to show newly created files and declining to provide a refresh button, instead adding a polling backend, breaks Zed on WSL" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49187716)) "I can't get over tabs for terminals and the file explorer doesn't refresh when new files are added from external sources" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47952980)) "Where as with Zed it'll just keep showing the old content and in fact closing and opening file wont even change what it shows in Zed." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45919258)) - Restrictive terms and telemetry concerns (3 comments): "If you need an education in law to be able to trust a business isn't trying to steal from you, then maybe you just shouldn't trust that business at all." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47963433)) "their terms of service which are pretty restrictive and involve(d) a clause that lets them revoke your access to the editor at any time for any reason" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47954096)) "The telemetry section of the TOS explicitly clarifies that that does not restrict their ability to use the data that is sent to them." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47955819)) - Unwanted AI and auto-installs (3 comments): "yesterday the Read Only drop-down disappeared and while I was doing my code review the AI agent started vibe coding without my permission" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49488411)) "Zed is a nonstarter for me as long as they install additional software (third party runtimes to run LSPs) without asking my permission." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47992599)) "purely on the lack of any controls over the collaboration feature that gets turned on the instant that you log into Github with it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47991696)) ## Alternatives hackers 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 - [VS Code](https://hackerapproved.com/p/vs-code.md): 273 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Zed", https://hackerapproved.com/p/zed/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).