flow

# Flow Control: a programmer's text editor

This is my Zig text editor. It is under active development, but very stable
and is my daily driver for almost everything.

[![Announcement](https://img.youtube.com/vi/Mf3k2uFkyK4/maxresdefault.jpg)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mf3k2uFkyK4)


# Features

- **Lightning Fast** TUI with ≤6ms frame times, **low latency** input
  handling and smooth **animated scrolling**
- Intuitive UI with **tabs**, **scrollbars** and **palettes** with full
  **mouse** support for all UI elements
- Support for more than **70 programming languages**, **zero
  configuration** needed, via **tree-sitter** powered syntax highlighting
- **Language Server Protocol** pre configured support for most language
  servers
- Powerful **multi-cursor** editing and integrated **clipboard history**
- Powerful configurable keybinding system that supports **modal** and
  **non-modal** editing styles
- Multiple pre-configured **keybinding modes**
    - Flow Control - GUI IDE style bindings (similar to vscode)
    - Emacs
    - Vim
    - Helix
    - User created
- Hybrid rope/piece-table buffer system, edit **very large files** with
  **thousands of cursors**
- Infinite **undo** (at least until you run out of ram)
- Full **unicode** support, including support for the kitty text sizing
  protocol
- Plenty of **themes** included and support for vscode themes via the
  flow-themes project
- Runs on **Linux, FreeBSD, MacOS, Windows and Android** (under termux)
  with easy **cross-compilation** to all supported targets


# Requirements

- A modern terminal with **24bit color** and, ideally, **kitty keyboard
  protocol** support. **Kitty**, **Foot** and **Ghostty** are the
  recommended terminals at this time. **Zellij** also works well. Most
  other terminals will work, but likely with reduced functionality.
- **NerdFont** support. Either via terminal font fallback or a patched
  font.
- A **UTF-8** locale


# Roadmap

See our [devlog](https://flow-control.dev/devlog/2026/) for on-going
updates from the development team.

## In Development

- LSP completion support
- Persistent undo/redo
- File watcher integration

## Future

- Collaborative editing
- Plugin system
- Multi-terminal sessions


# Installer and manual downloads

There is an [installation guide](https://flow-control.dev/installation) on
the main website with instructions for using the installer script. Direct
downloads of source tarballs and release and nightly binary builds are
listed on the [downloads](https://flow-control.dev/downloads) page.

Or check your favorite local system package repository.

[![Packaging status](https://repology.org/badge/vertical-allrepos/flow-control.svg)](https://repology.org/project/flow-control/versions)


# Building

Make sure your system meets the requirements listed above.

Flow builds with zig 0.17 at this time. Build with:

```shell
zig build -Doptimize=fast
```

Zig will by default build a binary optimized for your specific CPU. If you
get illeg