Lux
Overview
Lux is a fast, free, open-source native text and code editor built from the ground up in Rust. It is designed to recapture and surpass the legendary ergonomics of Sublime Text 3: instant cold startup (< 150ms), imperceptible input latency (< 8ms), seamless editing of massive files, first-class multi-cursor workflows, and an unobtrusive, distraction-free user interface.
🌐 Website & Documentation: https://lcajigasm.github.io/lux/
.github/workflows/pages.yml deploys the site on every push to main, and on workflow_dispatch. A deploy while the repository was private failed with HTTP 422 (run 41274477945). The repository is public now.
Unlike web-based or Electron editors, Lux is compiled directly to native machine code with hardware-accelerated WGPU rendering. It incorporates an in-process Git engine (gix), an integrated PTY terminal (portable-pty), a non-blocking Language Server Protocol client (async-lsp), tree-sitter incremental syntax highlighting, and sandboxed WebAssembly plugins (wasmtime).
Target platforms, in order: macOS, Windows, Linux, then iPadOS/iOS, then Android.
Editor pictures in this README and on the website are PNGs produced by
scripts/screenshots.sh (see CONTRIBUTING.md). That job
builds the real lux binary and captures its window. Drawings of the UI
are not accepted.
Downloads
Lux is a macOS editor first. Linux and Windows still build, and they are secondary.
Pushing a vX.Y.Z tag runs .github/workflows/release.yml on ubuntu-latest and attaches the Linux packages plus SHA256SUMS. That publish starts .github/workflows/release-macos.yml once: one standard macos-15 runner, 45 minute cap, universal .dmg, attached to the same release. That job appends the .dmg line to SHA256SUMS. The release workflow does not run on pull request, branch push, or the tag push itself, so the Linux workflow does not start a second macOS job. workflow_dispatch is only a manual retry. Pull-request CI also builds the universal image on macos-15 and uploads it as an artifact; it does not publish it. Windows stays out of CI. Runners are the standard ubuntu-latest and macos-15 images (macos-14 is unsupported after 2026-11-02).
| Asset | Where it is built |
|---|
lux-macos-universal.dmg | macos-15, when the GitHub Release is published (scripts/package-macos.sh) |
lux-linux-x86_64, lux-linux-amd64.deb, SHA256SUMS | GitHub Actions, ubuntu-latest, on a v* tag. The macOS job then adds the .dmg hash to SHA256SUMS |
lux-windows-x86_64.msi | outside CI, scripts/package-msi.ps1 (unsigned WiX) |
Install on macOS
The disk image contains Lux.app (bundle id dev.lux.editor), a universal binary (Apple Silicon and Intel, lipo), lux.icns, and an ad-hoc signature. It is not notarized. There is no Apple Developer ID certificate in this repo, and Gatekeeper will quarantine the app.
- Open
lux-macos-universal.dmg and drag Lux to Applications.
- If macOS reports the app as damaged or from an unidentified developer, clear quarantine and open it again:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Lux.app
lux . in a terminal opens the current folder. The bundle lists public.folder, so Finder can hand a folder to Lux. See docs/macos-parity.md.
The .deb depends on libfontconfig1 and libegl1 (the GPU loader the Linux binary dlopens), plus the xkbcommon, X11, and Wayland libraries it loads before it opens a window. No signing certificate is stored in this repo. The v1.1.0 macOS disk image is the older Apple Silicon installer, not the universal image above. See docs/ROADMAP.md and docs/STATUS.md.
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
