Hacker News Reader

Comment by johnfn | Hacker News Reader

Zed seems really nice, and the usability has come a really long way in the last couple of months. That being said, I have one issue, and I hesitate to even bring it up because it seems so shallow: I hate all the themes! They all look so ugly and amateur. I know this is a really trivial thing, it's like complaining I don't like Python because it uses whitespace for indent or something, but I just can't get over it. VSCode/Cursor is beautiful in comparison.

I recently found Github Dark Default, which is probably the okay-est of the 10-15 I tried, but there is so much that still looks bad. The autocomplete popover looks far worse than VSCode, the file tree looks much worse, tabs look ugly, etc.

Does anyone have any suggestions here?

View on HN

You're not alone. The only reason I struggle to onboard to Zed is the design. They're doing an incredible job with the editor, but I have never seen a more bland design in any IDE. It's genuinely so bad that it affects my productivity in it. I'm a fan of Visual Studio and VS Code dark themes, I don't need anything special.

Isn't "bland" design precisely what you'd want from an IDE? To help you focus on the code and all that?

It's been a while since I last looked at Zed, so I just started it again, and it ... looks like your average macOS app? Which to me sounds pretty much ideal.

Nothing wrong with bland, but a well-designed IDE does a good job using the UI to allow you to parse information as fast as possible. For instance, compare the autocomplete popover in Zed to VSCode. The VSCode popover:

- Has icons. These are so useful for parsing information quickly!!

- Shows the type information in a different color than the field name. There is spacing between the type name, and the type is smaller.

The Zed autocomplete popover is a solid wall of (almost entirely) monochrome text, all the same size. It is significantly harder to parse. I use the autocomplete popover probably thousands of times a day. These subtle things make a big difference.

Is the Zed popover bland? Yes. Is the VSCode popover flashy? Not really, it's just utilitarian - clearly designed by someone who understood how important every detail is.

I program mostly in Rust, so in theory Zed should be the perfect IDE for me. But I couldn't get past the design. It just put me in the wrong mind space.

As a data point for the Zed folks: JetBrains' RustRover with vim key bindings is still my go-to. It just "looks and feels" right to me.

I'm sure that they'll get there in time. They're playing the slow, careful, methodical game. Writing it in Rust was the right choice and it'll pay dividends.

In 2007 I had the best actionscript IDE that looked awesome and made the whole actionscript development magical. FlashDevelop iirc. It made a huge difference and inspired me every time.

There's a forum thread [0] where users share their custom themes.

There's also an importer tool [1] that lets you convert any VS Code theme to a Zed theme. You might still need to compile the importer yourself, but it's all pretty straightforward.

0: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/7337

1: https://zed.dev/blog/user-themes-now-in-preview#using-a-vs-c...

Push through it. You get used to it. Then start to like simplicity of it.

And then, due to speed, there is no going back to the lag infested chromium derivative made by Microsoft.

Believe me, I am trying! I have Zed open and I try frequently to get used to it, but it drives me nuts - the autocomplete in particular.

I agree. I couldn't get over any of the existing themes, they just seem so low contrast... So I spent a bunch of hours porting then favorite theme I've been using in Sublime Text, to Zed, named iPlastic. Sublime Text has a theme back of classic TextMate themes, and it came in that pack. I have to say, the porting process was not very easy, but it was worth it. Now, I prefer Zed to ST and VSCode because of the theme, not just the UI and other features :)

Wish I could just import my ST4 settings and theme into Zed. That'd help a lot. For now I consider it too much hassle and ST4 with LSP is good enough.

I spent a couple hours recreating the theme I was using previously in Sublime Text. The end result was not identical but close enough to feel OK.

I use the Night Owl theme in all my editors (and terminal), including Zed, and the consistency is nice. It looks good, but if there’s a Zed-specific issue I haven’t used Zed in a while.

I feel you. I still haven't found the light theme that would work for me. In VSCode I use Better Selenized. Even tried to import it to Zed but experience was a bit subpar.

I like the Tokyo Night themes, maybe take one of those for a spin

Yup, this and a few other things. But I expect that Zed is going to be a lovely editor in a few more years.

I just made my own. Took about 15 minutes and now it's the best looking app on my Mac.

I really like One Dark Pro, but you have to install it from the additional themes link.

I like Nord Dark because it uses only 3 colours. It’s available as an extension.

Le Blackque is working well for me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com