I don't know Rust.

These days I barely open my full IDE — pre-AI I was doing thousands of commits a year, and now I mostly live in its commit and diff view, one of the few things heavy enough to make me wait for a JVM to start.

So Kyde is just that. A fast native commit and diff code editor — a Git client for macOS, Linux and Windows.

~120fps scrolling a 37k-line package-lock.json — viewport virtualization + off-thread highlighting.

Goals

• Fast. Native GPU rendering, low latency. 120fps even on large files.
• Familiar. A tuned dark theme so it feels at home to anyone who's lived in a modern IDE.
• Side-by-side diff with word-level highlighting and a center gutter to stage/revert hunks — git add -p, made visual.
• Open a folder and edit with tree-sitter highlighting.

Stack

• gpui (Apache-2.0) — Zed's native, GPU-rendered GUI framework. No web, no Electron.
• git, shelled out. No libgit2.
• similar (Apache-2.0) — line and word diffing.

Built from scratch on gpui, borrowing patterns from existing editors but not their code.

Theme

A hand-tuned dark palette, configurable at runtime via ~/.config/kyde/theme.json.

Features

Projects

• Landing view when no project is open: searchable recents with branch + path, persisted to ~/.config/kyde/projects.json.
• Open / New Project via the native folder picker.

Code — browse & edit

• Folder tree — expandable, resizable, file-type icons, git-status colors.
• Text editor — selection, undo/redo, copy/cut/paste, Tab/Shift-Tab indent, ⌘-backspace, line numbers, current-line highlight, IME, auto-save.
• Find & replace — ⌘F find (⌘G/⇧⌘G to cycle), ⌘R replace.
• Editor tabs that scroll and follow the active file.
• Image preview for PNG/JPG/GIF/WebP.
• Syntax highlighting via tree-sitter, installed on demand from a built-in Language Plugins manager. Packs: TypeScript/TSX, JavaScript, Rust, JSON, Markdown, Shell, CSS, SCSS, YAML, TOML, Python, HTML, Go, R, LaTeX — plus always-on .env and .gitignore highlighters, and a Font preview plugin. Each pack is also a Cargo feature, so a build can ship only the grammars it wants (details).
• Code folding for grammar-backed languages.
• Markdown preview — a live rendered pane alongside the editor.

Git — commit, diff, branches

• Commit view: changed-files list + an editable side-by-side diff — base on the left, live working copy on the right, both highlighted.
• Stage / revert per hunk from the center gutter, or whole files; commit via the message box.
• Rollback in a native window — checkbox tree, optional deletion of added files, right-click for diff.
• Push when ahead of upstream (status-bar button + context menu).
• Branch switcher — searchable tree, / as folders, Recent / Local roots.
• File management from the tree — New File, Rename, Delete (with confirm).

Search & navigation

• Go to File (⌘⇧O / ⌘P) and Find Action (⌘⇧A) fuzzy finders.
• Find in Files (⌘⇧F) — full-text content search across the repo (git grep), jump straight to a match.
• Scratch files — throwaway buffers under a "Scratches" folder.
• Breadcrumbs in the status bar.

Look & feel

• Islands layout — rounded panels, draggable dividers, activity rail, native title bar (double-click to zoom), status bar.
• Native menu bar — Settings, FPS monitor toggle, Quit.
• App icon from the bundled logo.

Keymap & configuration

• WebStorm / VSCode presets with per-action overrides in ~/.config/kyde/keymap.json.
• Onboarding keymap picker on first launch, reopenable via Settings.
• Install shell command — optionally symlinks ky into ~/.local/bin. No shell-rc editing, no sudo.

Install

Grab the latest build for your platform from the Releases page.

macOS — download kyde-macos.zip, unzip, and drag Kyde.app to /Applications. The app isn't code-signed yet, so the first launch is blocked by Gatekeeper — right-click it and choose Open (once), or clear the quarantine flag:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Kyde.app

Linux — download kyde-linux.AppImage, make it executable, and run it:

chmod +x kyde-linux.AppImage
./kyde-linux.AppImage

Windows — download kyde-windows.zip, unzip, and run kyde.exe.

Or build from source — see Build. On macOS, ./scripts/bundle-macos.sh produces dist/Kyde.app you can drag to /Applications.

Usage

Launch with no arguments for the Projects view, or point it at a repo:

cargo run -- /path/to/repo

First-run setup offers to install a ky shell command (a symlink into ~/.local/bin — no shell-rc editing, no sudo); leave it ticked and you can open Kyde from any terminal:

ky                 # Projects view
ky /path/to/repo   # open a repo directly

Default shortcuts (WebStorm → VSCode):

• Go to File: ⌘⇧O → ⌘P
• Find Action: ⌘⇧A
• Find / Replace in file: ⌘F / ⌘R
• Save: ⌘S
• Commit: ⌘K → ⌘⏎
• Commit view: ⌘9 → ⌃⇧G
• Browse view: ⌘1 → ⌘⇧E
• New Scratch: ⌘⇧N
• Settings: ⌘,

Build

Needs Rust 1.96+ and (on macOS) Apple's Metal Toolchain, which gpui uses to compile its shaders — if a clean machine errors with "missing Metal Toolchain", run xcodebuild -downloadComponent MetalToolchain.

cargo build --release          # full — every language grammar baked in (default)
cargo test                     # logic, perf guards, and headless-gpui smoke tests

Each language pack is a Cargo feature, so unused grammars can be dropped from the binary entirely (smaller image + resident RAM):

cargo build --release --no-default-features --features rust,json,toml

Performance

Large files stay smooth via viewport virtualization (only on-screen rows are shaped each frame) and async highlighting (big files open instantly as plain text, then highlight off-thread). A 37k-line package-lock.json scrolls at ~120fps.

Guarded by perf_* time-budget tests, headless-gpui smoke tests (render every screen, fail on any panic), and a toggleable on-screen FPS monitor.

Known limitations / next

• Prebuilt releases are macOS-only. I develop on macOS and wouldn't actively test Linux/Windows, so I only ship a signed + notarized macOS build rather than binaries I can't stand behind. The code itself is cross-platform — gpui runs on all three, and Linux/Windows packaging already exists in scripts/ (just unwired from the release). Re-enabling them is a good first issue for a contributor who runs those platforms. Until then, Linux/Windows users can cargo build --release.
• No soft-wrap or caret-follow scrolling yet. The editor uses a flat String; a rope-based buffer comes later for very large edits.
• File watching currently refreshes on focus only. Live updates will likely use notify.

Contributing

If you open a PR, please be kind — explain the idiomatic way, don't just dunk on my .clone()s. I'll read every comment and quietly Google what a lifetime is.

If the feature adds a lot of bloat, it should be a plugin.