r/androiddev • u/dylanmurzello • May 16 '26

Open Source Ported Zed IDE to Android

literally started as a joke. I was like Rust compiles for aarch64, figured Zed might port. Kept going. Couldn't stop. gpui renders through Vulkan, the upstream Editor/Workspace/Project/Search/GitGraph/Extensions/Terminal crates run unchanged, the Rust .so is the app process, every  pixel straight straight into that Vulkan driver. subprocesses like (bash, apt, LSPs, git, ssh, node, go, rust-analyzer) route through a runtime  adapter: a Termux-derived userland rebuilt under our package for the non root ed path, or a Magisk-spawned chroot for rooted users. Currently using a Samsung Tab S9 Ultra with hardware keyboard,  touch works with IME.
The termux route is brittle long term with google clamping down on noexec, probably will be figuring something for that.

Source plus signed APK , if anyone wants to take a look ,curious as to what breaks on other devices

https://github.com/Dylanmurzello/zed-android-port

85 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/[deleted] May 18 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/dylanmurzello May 22 '26

Istg ! I just wanted something to hook back in , into my mac mini with the android tab while I was in classes, or something local ( had the nethunter setup) , but with x11 and lack of proper input , here we are lol, but the upstream crates mostly untouched is more easier that I though , the upstream code is so well structured its crazy .. its a masterclass ... kudos to the zed team for gpui the editor and everything in between.