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zed/docs/src/modelines.md
Marc-Andre Lureau 58fec75396
Add vim/emacs modeline support (#49267) 
Many editors such as vim and emacs support "modelines", a comment at the
beginning of the file that allows the file type to be explicitly
specified along with per-file specific settings

- The amount of configurations, style and settings mapping cannot be
handled in one go, so this opens up a lot of potential improvements.
- I left out the possiblity to have "zed" specific modelines for now,
but this could be potentially interesting.
- Mapping the mode or filetype to zed language names isn't obvious
either. We may want to make it configurable.

This is my first contribution to zed, be kind. I struggled a bit to find
the right place to add those settings. I use a similar approach as done
with editorconfig (merge_with_editorconfig). There might be better ways.

Closes #4762

Release Notes:

- Add basic emacs/vim modeline support.

Supersedes #41899, changes:
- limit reading to the first and last 1kb
- add documentation
- more variables handled
- add Arc around ModelineSettings to avoid extra cloning
- changed the way mode -> language mapping is done, thanks to
`modeline_aliases` language config
- drop vim ex: support
- made "Local Variables:" handling a separate commit, so we can drop it
easily
- various code style improvements

---------

Signed-off-by: Marc-André Lureau <marcandre.lureau@redhat.com>
Co-authored-by: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
Co-authored-by: Conrad Irwin <conrad.irwin@gmail.com>
2026-03-25 03:15:51 +00:00

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Modelines

Modelines are special comments at the beginning or end of a file that configure editor settings for that specific file. Zed supports both Vim and Emacs modeline formats, allowing you to specify settings like tab size, indentation style, and file type directly within your files.

Configuration

Use the modeline_lines setting to control how many lines Zed searches for modelines:

{
  "modeline_lines": 5
}

Set to 0 to disable modeline parsing entirely.

Emacs

Zed has some compatibility support for Emacs file variables.

Example:

# -*- mode: python; tab-width: 4; indent-tabs-mode: nil; -*-

Supported Emacs Variables

Variable Description Zed Setting
mode Major mode/language Language detection
tab-width Tab display width tab_size
fill-column Line wrap column preferred_line_length
indent-tabs-mode nil for spaces, t for tabs hard_tabs
electric-indent-mode Auto-indentation auto_indent
require-final-newline Ensure final newline ensure_final_newline_on_save
show-trailing-whitespace Show trailing whitespace show_whitespaces

Vim

Zed has some compatibility support for Vim modeline.

Example:

# vim: set ft=python ts=4 sw=4 et:

Supported Vim Options

Option Aliases Description Zed Setting
filetype ft File type/language Language detection
tabstop ts Number of spaces a tab counts for tab_size
textwidth tw Maximum line width preferred_line_length
expandtab et Use spaces instead of tabs hard_tabs
noexpandtab noet Use tabs instead of spaces hard_tabs
autoindent ai Enable auto-indentation auto_indent
noautoindent noai Disable auto-indentation auto_indent
endofline eol Ensure final newline ensure_final_newline_on_save
noendofline noeol Disable final newline ensure_final_newline_on_save

Notes

  • The first kilobyte of a file is searched for modelines.
  • Emacs modelines take precedence over Vim modelines when both are present.
  • Modelines in the first few lines take precedence over those at the end of the file.