zed
zed copied to clipboard
zed-industries
Add secondary editor windows to support multi-monitor setup
Check for existing issues
- [X] Completed
Describe the feature
One thing that I greatly enjoy with JetBrain IDEs (and, I believe, was added to VSCode not so long ago) is the ability to open a secondary windows for editor tabs only, to support multi-monitor setup.
FWIW, I typically use a horizontal + vertical monitor setup where:
- the main project window, along with one loooong editor tab and the terminal go to the vertical screen
- a side-by-side, dual editor window goes to the horizontal screen
If applicable, add mockups / screenshots to help present your vision of the feature
No response
Really is making/breaking zed for me to be able to have it up on multiple monitors. Want to be able to have an editors on all of my vertical monitors.
Hello. I also use multiple monitors with different resolutions, and not being able to dedicate all that space to the editor is a major blocker. It really limits productivity for developers with multi-monitor setups. Having something like JetBrains' multi-window support would be life-changing. I’d love to see this prioritized.
I use a setup like this as well, but I often put "panels", not just editors, in the second window.
I found a workaround in Discussions, it helped me: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/12074#discussioncomment-12472029
It would be really nice to get an update on this feature, for me it's an important one and it seems to have a lot of support (here and in duplicate https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/17618 and in possible other duplicates)
Now with the new agent workflow, I would really like to pop the agent dock out into its own window so I can display it fullscreen on my second portrait monitor. Even with a large main monitor, I find the agent window too cramped to comfortably read its messages and making it wider eats up too much of my editor space.
This would really help me, since I use quite large font sizes due to poor eyesight.
Possible workarounds:
- External terminal. iTerm2 with "Open with editor"="Zed" and oh-my-zsh (+ OneDark theme and Zed Plex Mono Font for aesthetic) is pretty decent.
- For editor, panels, and the agent, Zed window can be resized to take both monitors. Add a second panel and move the separator to the edge of the monitor. On macOS, requires "Displays have separate spaces" off and horizontal display arrangement.
- Open a second window for the same project
zed -n your_dir(https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/12074#discussioncomment-12472029). But beware, changes in buffers do not sync:if a file gets changed in the new window, you will have to either overwrite or discard the file in the first window
Now with the new agent workflow, I would really like to pop the agent dock out into its own window so I can display it fullscreen on my second portrait monitor. Even with a large main monitor, I find the agent window too cramped to comfortably read its messages and making it wider eats up too much of my editor space.
This would really help me, since I use quite large font sizes due to poor eyesight.
Ditto on this. I'd really prefer to have the agent panel on my secondary (vertical) display. zed -n just doesn't cut it due to the files not syncing.
A small comment: the workaround zed -n obviously does not work for remote development as one cannot invoke zed from terminal running on a remote vm.
Hi everyone! Do you know if we have any updates on this? I’ve been trying out Zed, and it’s great! However, I’ve been using two monitors for more than 15 years, and working with just one is really painful. Do we know if this feature is planned?
It doesn’t appear that this is planned: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/pull/33690#issuecomment-3271380130
At a minimum, I would like to be able to open a new window and drag a tab over from one window to another. Add context menu to the tab to 'Open in new window' would be nice of course
I just realized that i cannot even open a new window and inside that window open a file that is part of another already open folder ? That is truly disappointing. You actively hinder multi-monitor support that way.
It 'decides' to open the file in the other window. wow.
Wants to use zed as a text editor for simple tasks instead of IDE. I double click to open a file, and when I try to open another in my file manager it just fails.
Please don't tell me open workspace, as I said I use zed as text editor not IDE.
I would also love to be able to open the same project in multiple windows. I'm coming from Sublime Text. In addition to the multi-monitor setup, for me, a very common use case is using separate windows to organize files associated with different branches/PRs that I am switching between. Often I'll be working on or reviewing a branch and switch to another, and those branches have different sets of files that are relevant. I can easily jump between windows to get back to the files I was working on without losing my place.
Really something I've been looking for. That's the only thing dragging me back to VSCode. Zed would be pretty much complete for me with this as I use a 2-monitor setup and have lower productivity by being locked into a single one.
only thing dragging me back to VSCode.
Really? Last time I checked (been a while, I guess), vscode had pretty bad-to-non-existent multi monitor support too.
Last time I checked (been a while, I guess), vscode had pretty bad-to-non-existent multi monitor support too.
Check again ✔️ ✅
They watched this issue for 7 years before figuring it out.
https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/10121#event-11122878602
An! They finally did it a couple of months after I switched to Zed. Typical 😅
I really hope it doesn’t take Zed 7 years to implement.
I’d even be willing to contribute to help make it happen, but when I looked it seemed tightly coupled to a one window design (and my Rust is, err, rusty). But perhaps with some guidance I could take a stab at it. Any Zed employees folks here have any input?
Would it make sense to merge the changes or find a quick solution and then work on it in more detail. Having only one window is so restraining. Nowadays people have so many displays. In my IntelliJ/Rust Rover I always have at least two windows open e.g. for checking backend source code on another monitor or when writing markdown to have a full screen for preview. I find it to be more ergonomic to have separete windows than one shared/splitted one.
Would it make sense to merge the changes or find a quick solution and then work on it in more detail. Having only one window is so restraining. Nowadays people have so many displays. In my IntelliJ/Rust Rover I always have at least two windows open e.g. for checking backend source code on another monitor or when writing markdown to have a full screen for preview. I find it to be more ergonomic to have separete windows than one shared/splitted one.
Not to mention those of us who set up vertical monitors, then side by side really doesn't work.
Not to mention those of us who set up vertical monitors, then side by side really doesn't work.
That reminded me of a separate but kind of related thing: I wish you could have more than one panel open side by side (or if at the bottom, one above the other) on the same side, instead of a fixed “one panel per dock area”. This works in most other IDE’s and visual studio had it 25 years ago, the windowing system in Zed feels like such a step back. The rest of Zed is keeping me here, though.