Settings Sync

[JosephTLyons]

We've had a few issues come up asking us to add a settings sync feature to Zed:

• https://github.com/zed-industries/community/issues/952
• https://github.com/zed-industries/community/issues/265

While this is not currently on our roadmap, and it will likely not be added anytime soon, I'm interested to hear what all users would want from this sort of a feature. What all would you want synced and restored between different computers running Zed?

[JosephTLyons]

VS Code's setting sync has worked out pretty well for me, really smooth, completely forget that it's there, but I never liked that my settings were stored somewhere privately; I liked my settings being stored in a location I had control over. That might be a bit biased since I came from Atom prior and having to sync my settings with a GitHub Gist.

[zongUMR]

Maybe you can refer to sublime_text's sync strategy, it has a third-party package can sync the all settings to a private github gist, https://packagecontrol.io/packages/Sync%20Settings

[calebmeyer]

I was so disappointed the first time I tried to share my list of extensions with someone from VS Code. Yes, it's really smooth syncing, but the gist that both atom/sublime use is human readable and scriptable.

[calebmeyer]

What I'd like to see:

Sync Settings has four commands: backup to remote, restore from remote, create profile, and switch profile. They all look at a git repository in any code host (github/gitlab/bitbucket, etc)

Sync Settings prompts you for that repository's URL on first launch, and automatically gets/sets up an access token if needed (if the repo is private). Then it downloads that repo and uses it to set up the editor.

Inside the repo is plaintext settings files in folders. Each folder is a complete configuration setup (settings + keybinds + extensions/packages + whatever else) and the folder name is the name of a profile (e.g. work, writing, rust, etc.). If exactly one folder exists, it is treated as the default for all operations. The default is otherwise the folder named default or the first folder alphabetically.

If you have multiple profiles, you can relaunch the editor with a different profile using the switch profile command.

[photex]

I really like the "settings repository" plugin for CLion. I point it to a git repo and it does the rest.

I appreciate the simplicity of the VScode sync, but it's also a bit shady isn't it. (Yes, I'm aware of the JetBrains sync plugin that works similarly to VSCode as well).

The reason I prefer settings sync that's sort of built-in vs a third party is two parts, the first part is trust, the second part is support.

By trust I mean, I'm perhaps a paying customer of Zed and I can trust that the feature is implemented by the company and I'm trusting a single entity in this situation (I don't have to worry about a rogue update to the extension that starts to siphon off secrets from my computer).

By support I mean, since it's a tier 1 product feature and so will support sync'ing all relevant settings, extensions, and themes. I don't have to worry about it getting abandoned (like I worry about most of the Sublime ecosystem).

[rcrooks]

I would be happy even to be able to change the location of the settings json file to a shared folder (dropbox or google drive or apple cloud or whatever) to be able to keep the settings in sync between my two machines. If we adopted this for my team at work, it would be great to have the option of sharing settings with the whole team (with the choice of using the team shared settings or not).

[mattly]

is there any reason why settings sync couldn't happen via source control, like other dotfiles?

[mattly]

since posting this 10 months ago, Zed has done two things that have made it more difficult:

1. Littered .config/zed with a bunch of .tmpxxxxx files, which can be gitignored but ultimately make working with that directory in Zed itself much less pleasant

2. Added extensions, the manifest or state of which are kept in a different directory. I would very much love to have this stored in a version-controlled data file. I'd gone to a bit of trouble to create this ability for myself with vscode:

   • https://github.com/mattly/dotfiles/blob/master/bin/codex
   • https://github.com/mattly/dotfiles/blob/master/configs/.config/vscode/extensions

   But with Zed it requires some workarounds right now, such as symlinking ~/Library/Application Support/Zed/extensions/manifest.json and possibly other things, but I'm not sure it would rebuild everything else based on a manifest.

I feel very strongly that my editor setup should be able to be managed and synced through version control. In addition to the benefits of version control, it also allows for better partitioning between usage contexts, which is why VSCode settings sync doesn't work for me.

I have created per-employer or per-client github accounts when I am assigned a machine owned by that company, because I do not sign into personal accounts on machines I do not own. With my settings stored in git, I can very easily share the repository between those accounts, sync changes back and forth and such. I can't do that with VSCode Settings Sync because the sync is tied to a single github account, which would break the usage context barriers I have setup.

Making it easy to manage settings via source control would also mean less infrastructure to build around Zed. The "Sign In" feature currently requires a Github account, but how much of the editor do you want to base around people having github accounts?

[kergoth]

It's not perfect, as it doesn't sync removal, but the auto_install_extensions setting helps with this.

[erhhung]

Littered .config/zed with a bunch of .tmpxxxxx files, which can be gitignored but ultimately make working with that directory in Zed itself much less pleasant

Why are these .tmpxxxxx files under $XDG_CONFIG_HOME (~/.config/zed) in the first place?
Isn't $XDG_STATE_HOME (~/.local/state/zed) or $XDG_CACHE_HOME (~/.cache/zed) the more appropriate locations?

[skyf0cker]

settings and keymap.
When I changed a keymap on my work Mac, I needed to sync it with my home Mac after work. It's not difficult, but it's annoying.

[enkr1]

can you kindly show ur workaround please?

[enkr1]

whats the latest update in syncing your settings, extensions, etc across multiple devices right now?

Thank you!

[enkr1]

really wish for an update man ._.

[Aur0nd]

I'd really love to see zed smashing but lacking little features such as this makes me go back to intelli...

[FlorianWendelborn]

What about manually syncing ~/.config/zed? Is this the currently intended way? Is there any non-obvious downsides to this that I’m missing? I’m also interested in settings sync, but if officially encouraged I could easily live with syncing ~/.config/zed

[Jervx]

Hell yeah, settings sync will save us from doing custom settings over and over again

[aretrace]

[jonathanjsimon]

Just adding my voice to the desire for settings sync :-)

[lougreenwood]

I sync my dotfiles, no need for settings sync.

[devdumpling]

+1 the need, coming from emacs and VS Code, but for me personally it'd be enough to just have a toggleable auto-push-on-save (debounced for things like theme switching) of my settings to a repo I select. That's not something Zed necessarily needs to do either, but could be a neat quality of life thing.

Like many devs, I'm very particular about my setup and I work across a few machines. I have a "set up all my shit" repo for init'ing on new machines specifically to help with this. Currently just manually pushing my config to that repo 🤷

[wojtyniak]

Can we at least get anything that is not a static configuration removed from ~/.config/zed? It would make syncing the folder much easier.

[devdumpling]

For the time being I'm "syncing" my ~/.config/zed into a private repo I use to sync configs for a number of apps across multiple machines (and for making initial setup on new machines easier). Pretty straightforward and haven't had any issues. It's not quite the same as having it built into the editor but works for me. I'm not using any extensions or anything yet though so not sure if it would cover that or other use-cases.

I was able to get what I need (sync keymaps, editor settings, AI conversations, and basically everything in .config/zed that isn't a tmp file with a simple script that runs on a cron or manually if needed. It uses rsync to omit the tmp* files.

rsync -av --exclude='.tmp*' "$ZED_SOURCE_DIR/" "$ZED_DEST_DIR/"

Here's a gist with the script I use in case it's helpful to anyone:

https://gist.github.com/devdumpling/206cddd544be229ef27af50ce7f80c29

[rome-user]

I use home-manager in Nix to manage the all configuration of a computer in a single file. Home-manager supports various editors (Emacs, VS Code, etc.). The ideal option for Nix users is exposing all settings in settings.json.

I currently use home-manager to effortlessly recreate desktop and development environments across several computers (this works on Mac and Linux).

[auno]

One issue that I just noticed when going for the standard solution of syncing settings through a git repository is that it clashes with the Remote Development feature in some cases. This happens because SSH connections, which might be different for different hosts, are stored in the regular settings file.

In my case, I use two separate workstations, one at home and and one at work, which both should be able to remote into a third computer, my work server. The settings for doing so are different for the two workstations though, so syncing the settings between them in that way would ensure that one is always broken. I also remote into my home workstation from my work one, but not the other way around, which further adds to the difference between those settings files.

This might be a corner case when it comes to the use of the Remote Development feature, but I would guess that I'm not the only one it applies to. The (conceptually) simple solution to this issue would of course be to separate out the SSH connections to their own configuration file, that one could choose to sync or not depending on ones needs.