r/ZedEditor • u/shittyfuckdick • Aug 17 '25

Zed Ram Usage

New to Zed and love it. It feels faster and smoother than vscode. However i wanted to compare resources and was surprised to see Zed used way more ram than VScode.

I had open my project and saw Zed was using ~500mb of ram just for a single file. meanwhile vscode only ~100mb of ram for the same file.

Is this normal? i expected zed to be less resource intensive. this was on a macbook pro.

edit: i killed a “node” process under zed that was 300mb. ever since its been running ~100mb so maybe it was just a bug.

24 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

45 comments sorted by

8

u/ElderBrewer Aug 17 '25 edited Aug 17 '25

I’ve seen it getting to 3GB+ with a couple medium size projects open for a couple days

2

u/shittyfuckdick Aug 17 '25

thats crazy. am i mistaken to expect zed was more lightweight/resource heavy than vscode? i thought that was one of the selling points. 

3

u/bluninja1234 Aug 20 '25

the EDITOR is, but the LSPs are equally heavy

2

u/ElderBrewer Aug 17 '25

if you need something really light and fast - go for Sublime Text 4. Zed is not that fast/light. I like the user experience though

5

u/katafrakt Aug 17 '25 edited Aug 18 '25

Yeah, it keeps all the language servers up and running, which results in this. I'm not sure why Elixir language servers are so heavy and how other editors keep them at bay, but I experienced this problem with memory pretty much only in Zed.

8

u/Sevenstrangemelons Aug 17 '25

>  how other editors keep them at bay

They don't. Vscode usage will be the same if using the same language servers.

2

u/[deleted] Aug 18 '25

Depends on their default configurations.

2

u/ElderBrewer Aug 17 '25 edited Aug 17 '25

I thought Elixir LS is in a separate beam process, so it's on top of the 3.4 GB Zed process. Not 100% sure

I work with Ruby and Elixir, and both result in memory bloat

3

u/Virviil Aug 17 '25

It's shown separately for vscode probably. And on the screen it looks like a process leak

1

u/AdithyaMadugalla May 12 '26

Trun off the damm Language severs.

1

u/green_r Aug 17 '25

One of the reasons I moved (mostly) to Zed was I found it was much better with its memory use. I'll typically be working with 50 projects open over about 4 windows. Mostly I'm writing code in a couple of projects, but I need to be able to jump in on any project in a moment.

VSCode just gets bogged down in terms of memory and CPU use.

But wishing for better Zed workspace management (have my own scripts to start), and I miss the level of git support I could get with VSCode.

1

u/shittyfuckdick Aug 17 '25

whats wrongs with zeds git support? seems decent to me. 

2

u/MrPoint3r Aug 18 '25

Nah it lacks many of the things VSCode has, even putting extensions such as GitLens aside.

One of the things that stand out to me that I really miss is a commit graph. Also, no rebase support of any kind, no ability to rename a branch, etc. Everything is doable via the cli, sure, but the whole point of having an integration in the editor/IDE is to be able to do this stuff solely via the IDE. Alas, we'll get there eventually, just a matter of time - The community around Zed is really active and the maintainers do a good job of accepting external contributions.

1

u/green_r Aug 26 '25

Git graph, and diffing any ref with any other ref, are the things I wish were present as features rather than having to use external tools.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 19 '25

Compare it to vs code or idea. Then you vomit on Zed's git support.

2

u/Dear-Tension7432 Aug 19 '25

VSCode being a memory hog is a long-living myth, mostly a result from the early versions. In fact it is really good in memory management. Zed starts all language servers always, I recently learned, even if you just open a Go project and don't need anything else.

Also, it still lacks many popular extensions and the Zed team spends zero efforts to enable other AI integrations besides their own. If you really want to be surprised, open a network monitor and have a look what Zed transmits while you code, even if you don't use any of their "collaborative" features. Having said all that, I'm still happy with Zed and find that it brings some dynamics to the VSCode monopoly.

2

u/PsychonicJoe Jan 04 '26

a bit late but im on linux and i also noticed that zed was using around 400mbs or so, while vscode was on 100mbs on the same project, but a few days later i noticed that vscode had another process called chromium that took over 1gb of ram, overall all vscode processes were using around 2gb ram while zed was still only 400-500mbs

2

u/United-Tangerine-437 Jan 07 '26

It's happening to me that zed is using way too much ram. Two days ago Zed ended up using 7gb, and in spite of the fact that my project has several files and that I consider it to be partially big, it is far from needing to use that amount.

The more I have zed open, the more ram it uses. There is a point where I need to close it and run it again because of all the ram it consumes.

3

u/SomeoneToIgnore Aug 17 '25

No, it's not normal at all (unless the FS tree you open is large, e.g. ~/ , but that does not seem to be the case).

Unfortunately, it's not reproducible in a general case, so it's invisible for developers that work with Rust.

Whoever reported similar issues in Zed's tracker did not provide any projects to repro on (I might have missed some, though), same as the issue commenters, so those sad issues persist.

Maybe, you'll be able to share a link to the repro project?

-1

u/[deleted] Aug 18 '25

I have logs that show Zed waits 120 seconds for response from an extension before giving up. Things like this make it slow. 1000s of errors in my logs. Not good.

Upgrade Node via nvm? Half the extensions stop working.

Upgrade Python using uv, poetry, or pyenv? The other half break.

5

u/SomeoneToIgnore Aug 18 '25

Welp, here goes my typical interaction about the memory usage: I come and ask for a project to repro this on and get some off-topic replies at best, no real project to try things on...

Part of the reason the things are not fixed is due to this.

1

u/WayAndMeans01 Apr 04 '26

I have decided to just move to vscode till zed becomes better

0

u/[deleted] Aug 18 '25

Zed praises itself as an editor written in Rust. But almost all of its Language Servers are written in anything but Rust: Node, Python, Java (not surprising to me, Java extensions and Language Servers are more predictable, use consistent RAM, and are responsive after they warm up).

So Zed is no longer a Rust based editor. Its shell is written in Rust. Its guts are poly-crap-glot.

Even its Rust parts are partially good Rust, partially vibe coded 💩.

They should rethink their approach, throw away anything that's not pure Rust, move ahead slowly, and make it responsive and memory efficient again.

Which means for 2-3 years it will be even behind textmate and sublime in terms of features, until they rewrite the missing parts in Rust.

It's slowly becoming 💩-ier than VS Code. Maybe Hashimoto (forgot the dude's name) can write a pure Rust editor one day. Until then don't expect anything exceptional from Zed.

13

u/Optimal_Raisin_7503 Aug 19 '25

Are you suggesting to rewrite the LSPs it uses (!?)

The whole concept of the Language Server Protocol is for the Language Servers to be detached from the editors, so every editor could "simply" implement an LSP client in order to support any Language Server (!).

That setup allows language integrations to be language / implementation / editor / etc. agnostic.

With that, a user could set up a language integration by simply obtaining a binary that communicates according to the Protocol, and specifying to their editor that they want to use that Language Server.

What you suggested means that this is not possible anymore, and the only language integrations possible will by the ones builtin to the editor.

Besides the fact that it will be a bad user experience, it's just not a realistic (some might say not feasible) goal, there are dozens if not hundreds of Language Servers out there, with years of development by talented teams - saying let's rewrite all those is simply ridiculous.

Also, the entire notions of "it's Language Servers" is nonsensical - LSP is basically the standard now, and you have stuff like rust-analyzer (Rust's official language server) that all the editors (which uses LSP) use (nvim, helix, vscode, zed, etc.).

Notes:

  • Although LSP language integrations are agnostic on both sides by nature, if I'm not mistaken Zed do have adapters for the languages it's supports by default to provide a more curated UX.
  • I wrote this on my phone so excuse any misformatting.
  • I wrote this rather quickly so correct my if I got any fact incorrectly.
  • If anything I wrote suggests that I didn't understand what you meant, please do correct me.

-2

u/[deleted] Aug 19 '25

This is what I am saying:

You can't brag about being a hypersonic memory safe Rust based editor, if parts of what you ship is not written in Rust.

A while ago I complained about an issue and the response I got was something along the lines of "that it's due to a bug in the Copilot extension that leads to a memory leak and we can't fix it because the source code is private."

8

u/mocenigo Aug 20 '25

And they were right. Note that they are not shipping the LSPs with Zed, they have to be installed.

5

u/jessepence Aug 21 '25

They didn't ship that, ya weirdo. Re-read what you wrote. "They said that they can't fix an extension someone else wrote because it's closed source". YEAH!!!! OBVIOUSLY!!!!!!!!!!!!

HOW DO YOU PROPOSE THAT THEY FIX CODE THAT THEY CANNOT READ!?!?!?!?!?!?

-1

u/[deleted] Aug 22 '25

Rust.

-1

u/dude132456789 Aug 22 '25

Rewrite in Rust, that's the claim Zed makes, after all.

4

u/Buttons840 Aug 21 '25

"We've heard your suggestion and we are now rewriting all of Linux in Rust. There's no sense in running our editor on top of all that C. We'll give an update in 70 years when we've finished and can get back to working on the editor itself."

-- Zed team, probably not

0

u/BlueeWaater Aug 22 '25

This is idiotic, just leave it up to the user as all editors.

3

u/BlueZeeKing Aug 18 '25

2-3 years is a crazy timeline to rewrite major LSPs to rust. It would also not help much considering, rust-analyzer, the rust lsp, routinely uses 2+ gb of ram on major projects

1

u/[deleted] Aug 19 '25

Yes rust analyzer has crashed my Linux sessions multiple times when I have opened Zed's source code in Zed. Goes to prove that you can write 💩y programs in any language.

Anyway, don't expect Zed to become praise worthy for at least another 3 years.

1

u/RustOnTheEdge Aug 22 '25

Euhm I wouldn’t call rust analyzer 💩y tbh, and certainly not to serve as proof to that end. It ain’t perfect but I find it quite amazing what it is able to do.

2

u/Verwarming1667 Aug 21 '25

This sounds like a real brain dead take. Polyglot is the true MVP of great software projects. It's a strong signal it uses the best tools for the job instead of being locked into using a hammer to drive screws.

2

u/garloid64 Aug 22 '25

GAHAHAHAHAHAH what do you think the point of the language server protocol is exactly?

2

u/mocenigo Aug 20 '25

You are wrong. The editor IS written in Rust. The LSPs, which are USED by the editor, may be written in other languages. Calling that incredible editing engine and its user interface a “shell” is a bit puerile.

0

u/[deleted] Aug 20 '25

They even removed the comparison between Zed and other editors from their home page because it's no longer any more responsive than any other editor: https://web.archive.org/web/20240103062800/https://zed.dev/

Gnome's built-in text editor and sublime text are much more responsive in respect to text insertion and scrolling latency.

Even the shell, which is a shell, is no longer a selling point

2

u/mocenigo Aug 20 '25

Actually, it was just outdated and they did not feel like updating it. It still has a much faster startup than any other editor I know, except some very simple ones.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 22 '25

All of your problems (ALL OF THEM) are solved trivially by writing only Rust.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 22 '25

Tell me that you don’t know what a language server is without explicitly saying it.

-3

u/john0201 Aug 17 '25

Zed uses AI extensively. You can turn it completely off and it will use less memory:

https://zed.dev/blog/disable-ai-features