zed-nowrap

Make Zed stop soft-wrapping and visually truncating very long lines.

Zed's "soft_wrap": "none" does not mean "never wrap". Its own default config says so out loud:

// 1. Prefer a single line generally, unless an overly long line is encountered.
//      "soft_wrap": "none",

There are actually two hardcoded guards derived from MAX_LINE_LEN = 1024:

• at 512 columns, "soft_wrap": "none" still wraps the line;
• at 1024 UTF-8 bytes, the renderer stops shaping the rest of the line, so its tail is invisible and the horizontal scroll range ends early.

Open a minified bundle, a wide CSV, a JSONL log, or a base64 blob and one of those guards makes it unusable regardless of your settings. There is no configuration option that lifts them; the performance limitation is discussed upstream.

This script raises both ceilings in the installed binary, restoring the behaviour you get in JetBrains IDEs, VS Code, Vim and everything else: one logical line stays one complete visual line, and you scroll sideways.

Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Shehtman/zed-nowrap/main/zed-nowrap.sh | bash

Prefer to read before you run — it patches a binary, so you should:

curl -fsSL -o zed-nowrap.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Shehtman/zed-nowrap/main/zed-nowrap.sh
less zed-nowrap.sh
bash zed-nowrap.sh

Then restart Zed. Make sure "soft_wrap": "none" is set in your settings.json.

Since Zed reverts the patch on every update, keep a copy around to re-run:

curl -fsSL -o ~/.local/bin/zed-nowrap https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Shehtman/zed-nowrap/main/zed-nowrap.sh
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/zed-nowrap

Usage

zed-nowrap.sh [OPTIONS]

  --status      Report the current wrap and render ceilings and exit.
  --restore     Restore the binary from the backup taken on first patch.
  --dry-run     Locate both limits and report, but change nothing.
  --cols N      New wrap-column/render-byte ceiling (default: 1048576).
  --bin PATH    Path to the zed-editor binary (default: autodetected).

Zed replaces its binary on every update, which reverts the patch. Re-run the script afterwards; it is idempotent and safe to run repeatedly.

How it works

In editor::element, Zed defines const MAX_LINE_LEN: usize = 1024 and uses it in two different parts of layout.

The wrap width handed to Editor::set_wrap_width is computed as (MAX_LINE_LEN / 2) as f32 * em_advance. In the compiled binary that is a single f32 sitting in .rodata:

mulss  0xbe80ec(%rip),%xmm0        ; em_advance * 512.0
call   <editor::Editor>::set_wrap_width

The script resolves <editor::Editor>::set_wrap_width, disassembles only the EditorElement layout routines, finds the mulss feeding each call, confirms that its target holds exactly 512.0, and rewrites it to 1048576.0.

Separately, LineWithInvisibles::from_chunks receives MAX_LINE_LEN as its render-byte limit. LLVM constant-propagates it into the optimized function as several 1024 immediates and a 1025 boundary immediate. Once the accumulated UTF-8 byte length crosses that value, Zed slices the shaped chunk at the limit and ignores the rest until the newline. The width used for horizontal scrolling comes from that truncated layout, which is why scrolling cannot reveal the tail.

The script locates only LineWithInvisibles::from_chunks symbols, validates a structural fingerprint containing comparisons, moves, and the limit + 1 boundary, then rewrites those immediates together. It verifies both ceilings in a temporary copy before atomically replacing the executable.

Because it works from symbols and instruction structure instead of fixed file offsets, it keeps working across Zed releases as long as the relevant compiled shape holds. If Zed's internals or compiler output change, the script refuses to patch rather than guessing.

Caveats

• Linux x86-64 only. Needs the official unstripped build, plus binutils and python3. macOS and ARM builds are not supported.
• The ceiling exists for a reason. It caps layout cost for pathological lines. Removing it means a file with a multi-megabyte single line can make the editor sluggish. In practice, JetBrains and VS Code handle the same files fine, and so does Zed at these widths — but it is a real trade-off, not a free win.
• A backup is written next to the binary as zed-editor.nowrap-backup on first patch (~450 MB). --restore puts it back; delete it if you would rather reclaim the space and reinstall Zed instead.
• Patched builds are unsupported by the Zed project. Don't file Zed bug reports against a patched binary without reverting first.
• --cols sets a column count for wrapping but a UTF-8 byte count for rendering. It must also be exactly representable as an f32; the default is safe for both encodings.

Verifying it worked

python3 -c "print('{\"x\":\"' + 'y'*20000 + '\"}')" > /tmp/longline.json
zed /tmp/longline.json

Before the original patch: a block of wrapped text. With only the old wrap-only patch: the line stays unwrapped but disappears after 1024 ASCII characters. After this patch: the complete line stays on one row and is reachable with horizontal scrolling.

Tests

The test suite builds a small x86-64 ELF fixture with the same symbol and instruction shapes. It covers dry-run, both writes, a pre-existing wrap-only installation, idempotence, restore, and refusal to patch an unknown rendering fingerprint:

./tests/test.sh

It requires gcc, binutils, and python3. The suite never modifies an installed Zed binary.

Русский

Zed использует два связанных жёстких ограничения: после 512 колонок режим "soft_wrap": "none" всё равно переносит строку, а после 1024 байт UTF-8 рендерер перестаёт формировать её видимый хвост. Из-за второго ограничения ширина горизонтальной прокрутки также вычисляется только по первым 1024 байтам.

Скрипт находит оба ограничения в установленном бинарнике по символам и структуре инструкций, поднимает их и проверяет результат до атомарной замены файла. После этого вся длинная строка остаётся на одной визуальной строке и доступна горизонтальной прокруткой — как в JetBrains. Если структура бинарника изменилась, скрипт завершает работу без записи.

Установка одной командой (см. Install выше), потом перезапустить Zed. Патч слетает при обновлении Zed — запустите скрипт снова. Откат: --restore.

License

MIT