Fresh
A modern, full-featured terminal text editor, with zero configuration. Familiar keybindings, mouse support, and IDE-level features — no learning curve required.
Official Website · Documentation · Discord · Contributing
Quick Install: curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sinelaw/fresh/refs/heads/master/scripts/install.sh | sh
Fresh brings the intuitive UX of VS Code and Sublime Text to the terminal. Standard keybindings, full mouse support, menus, and a command palette — everything works the way you'd expect, right out of the box. No modes, no memorizing shortcuts.
Built for real-world performance: Fresh handles multi-gigabyte files with negligible memory overhead and delivers consistently low-latency input, regardless of file size.
Command Palette & Fuzzy Finder
One shortcut to find files, run commands, switch buffers, and jump to any line.
Multitask with the Orchestrator
Start each task in its own worktree, hop between them with an arrow key, and leave the rest running.
Multi-Cursor Editing
Select and edit multiple occurrences simultaneously — the same workflow you know from graphical editors.
Themes & Customization
Browse and apply color themes instantly. Full settings UI and interactive keybinding editor included.
See more feature demos: Editing (search & replace, block selection, sort lines, ...) · Productivity (file explorer, split view, integrated terminal, ...) · Themes
Feature Overview
| Category | Features |
|---|
| File Management | open/save/new/close, file explorer, tabs, auto-revert, git file finder |
| Editing | undo/redo, multi-cursor, block selection, smart indent, comments, clipboard |
| Search & Replace | incremental search, find in selection, query replace, git grep |
| Navigation | go to line/bracket, word movement, position history, bookmarks, error navigation |
| Views & Layout | split panes, line numbers, line wrap, backgrounds, markdown preview |
| Language Server (LSP) | go to definition, references, hover, code actions, rename, diagnostics, autocompletion |
| Productivity | command palette, menu bar, keyboard macros, git log, diagnostics panel |
| Multitasking (Orchestrator) | one workspace per git worktree, terminals and long-running commands per workspace, coding agents (claude, codex, opencode, aider) with resumable sessions, dock switcher, remote/SSH workspaces |
| Extensibility | TypeScript plugins (sandboxed QuickJS), color highlighter, TODO highlighter, merge conflicts, path complete, keymaps |
| Internationalization | Multiple language support (see locales/), plugin translation system |
Installation
Quick install:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sinelaw/fresh/refs/heads/master/scripts/install.sh | sh
On Linux this installs the universal build: one statically linked binary
that runs on every distro, unpacked under ~/.local, owned by you. It needs no
root, and it updates itself — fresh --update, or the update prompt in the
editor. On macOS it uses Homebrew.
Prefer your distro's package manager? Ask for it explicitly:
curl -fsSL .../install.sh | sh -s -- --method=deb # also: rpm, aur, nix, cargo, npm, brew, appimage
Packages are fully supported — they are opt-in rather than the default because
installing one needs root and hands updates to that package manager. fresh
records how it was installed either way, and updates through that same
mechanism. --method=auto restores the old autodetecting behaviour, and
install.sh --help lists everything.
Or, pick your preferred method:
Universal build (Linux)
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sinelaw/fresh/refs/heads/master/scripts/install.sh | sh
A single static (musl) binary for x86_64 and aarch64 with every feature
compiled in, including plugins. It unpacks to ~/.local/share/fresh-editor and
symlinks ~/.local/bin/fresh; set FRESH_INSTALL_DIR / FRESH_BIN_DIR to put
them elsewhere. Ensure ~/.local/bin is in your PATH.
Because nothing else owns these files, this is the one Linux install that can
replace itself: fresh --update downloads the next release, verifies it
against both its published checksum and GitHub's release attestation, and swaps
the binary in place.
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
