Add preview to pickers and make them resizable by yara-blue · Pull Request #59604 · zed-industries/zed

yara-blue · 2026-06-19T15:23:22Z

Overhauls Zed's pickers to make them resizable and give them a preview.

Tracking issue: #56037

Background

The most requested Zed feature has the last year has been a Telescope like search box discussion. To understand why this is so popular we need to understand search can serve thee goals:

Navigation: fuzzy search is faster & easier then clicking in a file tree
Exploration: example, find a function by a word in its doc comment
Collecting: example, getting a list of functions to change

The project search which shows results in a multibuffer is the perfect way to operate on a list of items. Navigation and Exploration need a lot of context around each result and offer fast navigation between them. For both of these live searching is also critical.

The telescope UI is a picker with a preview to the right or below. It's offered in various editors and IDE's most famously Neovim (through the Telescope plugin), IntelliJ (natively), Helix (natively) and of course VScode (plugins) and it's many forks.

While having a UI like that for text search (our project search) is most requested the UX pattern is applied widely, from find_all_references to bookmarks. It enhances most pickers. Note that we have over 50 different picker modals!

The community has tried to build something like this for Zed:

These all became huge PR's that we could not merge for various reasons. This is a really hard feature to integrate in Zed!
This PR got started as #46478 and supercedes that.

Design

Extend pickers to support an optional preview with minimal changes to the pickers themselves.
Make pickers resizable.
Complement the existing search do not replace it by having both UI's share the underlying search and allow freely switching between them.
Allow extending the preview to things other then files.
Maintain a clean design on all the pickers.

Heigh level Implementation overview

Adds an Option<Preview> to Picker
Gives PickerDelegate a method to communicate a preview to the Picker
Overhaul the way pickers are drawn to allow for resizing them. Implemented on the Shape and SizeBouds structs.
Adds a high level way to draw the footer and editor so we do not need to change much to the pickers.
Adds a new text finder Picker
Adds a way to take a running search from project search and hand it to the text finder Picker and the other way round
Give the file finder a preview

Next steps

A more detailed list and how to help out will be added to the tracking issue for Pickes with previews

Add more previews to more pickers!
Enable selectioning multiple items in pickers and performing actions on those
Open selected items in a multibuffer
Add a way to restore the last picker
Make popovers (picker attached to some menu) resizable as well

Self-Review Checklist:

I've reviewed my own diff for quality, security, and reliability
Unsafe blocks (if any) have justifying comments
The content adheres to Zed's UI standards (UX/UI and icon guidelines)
Tests cover the new/changed behavior
Performance impact has been considered and is acceptable

Showcase

TODO (will be done post merge)

Release Notes:

Added resizing via dragging to all picker modals.
Added a preview to the File finder, the preview can be to the right or below.
Added a Text finder picker with a preview as alternative project search UI. The search is shared and allowes switch between UIs while running.

- focus problem is solved.

zed-industries-bot · 2026-06-19T15:32:00Z

	Messages
📖	This PR includes links to the following GitHub Issues: #56037, #8279 If this PR aims to close an issue, please include a `Closes #ISSUE` line at the top of the PR body.

Generated by 🚫 dangerJS against 85656ab

Overhauls Zed's pickers to make them resizable and give them a preview. Closes zed-industries#8279 ### Background The most requested Zed feature has the last year has been a [Telescope like search box](zed-industries#8279) [discussion](zed-industries#22581). To understand why this is so popular we need to understand search can serve thee goals: - Navigation: fuzzy search is faster & easier then clicking in a file tree - Exploration: example, find a function by a word in its doc comment - Collecting: example, getting a list of functions to change The project search which shows results in a multibuffer is the perfect way to operate on a list of items. Navigation and Exploration need a lot of context around each result and offer fast navigation between them. For both of these live searching is also critical. The `telescope UI` is a picker with a preview to the right or below. It's offered in various editors and IDE's most famously Neovim (through the Telescope plugin), IntelliJ (natively), Helix (natively) and of course VScode (plugins) and it's _many_ forks. While having a UI like that for text search (our project search) is most requested the UX pattern is applied widely, from `find_all_references` to `bookmarks`. It enhances most pickers. Note that we have over 50 different picker modals! The community has tried to build something like this for Zed: - zed-industries#44530 - zed-industries#45307 - zed-industries#46478 - zed-industries#43790 These all became huge PR's that we could not merge for various reasons. This is a really hard feature to integrate in Zed! This PR got started as zed-industries#46478 and supercedes that. ### Design - Extend pickers to support an optional preview with minimal changes to the pickers themselves. - Make pickers resizable. - Complement the existing search do not replace it by having both UI's share the underlying search and allow freely switching between them. - Allow extending the preview to things other then files. - Maintain a clean design on all the pickers. ### Heigh level Implementation overview - Adds an `Option<Preview>` to `Picker` - Gives `PickerDelegate` a method to communicate a preview to the Picker - Overhaul the way pickers are drawn to allow for resizing them. Implemented on the `Shape` and `SizeBouds` structs. - Adds a high level way to draw the `footer` and `editor` so we do not need to change much to the pickers. - Adds a new text finder Picker - Adds a way to take a running search from project search and hand it to the text finder Picker and the other way round - Give the file finder a preview ### Next steps A more detailed list and how to help out will be added to the tracking issue for [Pickes with previews](zed-industries#56037) - Add more previews to more pickers! - Enable selectioning multiple items in pickers and performing actions on those - Open selected items in a multibuffer - Add a way to restore the last picker - Make popovers (picker attached to some menu) resizable as well ## Self-Review Checklist: - [x] I've reviewed my own diff for quality, security, and reliability - [x] Unsafe blocks (if any) have justifying comments - [x] The content adheres to Zed's UI standards ([UX/UI](https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#uiux-checklist) and [icon](https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/main/crates/icons/README.md) guidelines) - [x] Tests cover the new/changed behavior - [x] Performance impact has been considered and is acceptable ## Showcase TODO (will be done post merge) --- Release Notes: - Added resizing via dragging to all picker modals. - Added a preview to the File finder, the preview can be to the right or below. - Added a Text finder picker with a preview as alternative project search UI. The search is shared and allowes switch between UIs while running. --------- Co-authored-by: ozacod <47009516+ozacod@users.noreply.github.com> Co-authored-by: ozacod <ozacod@users.noreply.github.com> Co-authored-by: Danilo Leal <daniloleal09@gmail.com>

palmerovicdev · 2026-06-24T21:22:28Z

Is this functionality available in the editor? I mean the Telescope-like search box.

stamengeorgiev · 2026-06-25T07:40:37Z

Is this functionality available in the editor? I mean the Telescope-like search box.

Seems so (in the 1.9.0 preview).
As far as I understand the code changes, you need to press cmd-alt-ponce the file picker is shown (ctrl if you are on linux/windows).

Overhauls Zed's pickers to make them resizable and give them a preview. Closes zed-industries#8279 ### Background The most requested Zed feature has the last year has been a [Telescope like search box](zed-industries#8279) [discussion](zed-industries#22581). To understand why this is so popular we need to understand search can serve thee goals: - Navigation: fuzzy search is faster & easier then clicking in a file tree - Exploration: example, find a function by a word in its doc comment - Collecting: example, getting a list of functions to change The project search which shows results in a multibuffer is the perfect way to operate on a list of items. Navigation and Exploration need a lot of context around each result and offer fast navigation between them. For both of these live searching is also critical. The `telescope UI` is a picker with a preview to the right or below. It's offered in various editors and IDE's most famously Neovim (through the Telescope plugin), IntelliJ (natively), Helix (natively) and of course VScode (plugins) and it's _many_ forks. While having a UI like that for text search (our project search) is most requested the UX pattern is applied widely, from `find_all_references` to `bookmarks`. It enhances most pickers. Note that we have over 50 different picker modals! The community has tried to build something like this for Zed: - zed-industries#44530 - zed-industries#45307 - zed-industries#46478 - zed-industries#43790 These all became huge PR's that we could not merge for various reasons. This is a really hard feature to integrate in Zed! This PR got started as zed-industries#46478 and supercedes that. ### Design - Extend pickers to support an optional preview with minimal changes to the pickers themselves. - Make pickers resizable. - Complement the existing search do not replace it by having both UI's share the underlying search and allow freely switching between them. - Allow extending the preview to things other then files. - Maintain a clean design on all the pickers. ### Heigh level Implementation overview - Adds an `Option<Preview>` to `Picker` - Gives `PickerDelegate` a method to communicate a preview to the Picker - Overhaul the way pickers are drawn to allow for resizing them. Implemented on the `Shape` and `SizeBouds` structs. - Adds a high level way to draw the `footer` and `editor` so we do not need to change much to the pickers. - Adds a new text finder Picker - Adds a way to take a running search from project search and hand it to the text finder Picker and the other way round - Give the file finder a preview ### Next steps A more detailed list and how to help out will be added to the tracking issue for [Pickes with previews](zed-industries#56037) - Add more previews to more pickers! - Enable selectioning multiple items in pickers and performing actions on those - Open selected items in a multibuffer - Add a way to restore the last picker - Make popovers (picker attached to some menu) resizable as well ## Self-Review Checklist: - [x] I've reviewed my own diff for quality, security, and reliability - [x] Unsafe blocks (if any) have justifying comments - [x] The content adheres to Zed's UI standards ([UX/UI](https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#uiux-checklist) and [icon](https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/main/crates/icons/README.md) guidelines) - [x] Tests cover the new/changed behavior - [x] Performance impact has been considered and is acceptable ## Showcase TODO (will be done post merge) --- Release Notes: - Added resizing via dragging to all picker modals. - Added a preview to the File finder, the preview can be to the right or below. - Added a Text finder picker with a preview as alternative project search UI. The search is shared and allowes switch between UIs while running. --------- Co-authored-by: ozacod <47009516+ozacod@users.noreply.github.com> Co-authored-by: ozacod <ozacod@users.noreply.github.com> Co-authored-by: Danilo Leal <daniloleal09@gmail.com>

…ed-industries#60114) Follow-up to zed-industries#59604 Build stats changes for `cargo clean && RUSTC_WRAPPER= CARGO_BUILD_RUSTC_WRAPPER= cargo build --timings -p zed`: ``` ===== BASE (441de84) ===== total schedule end: 161.5s units compiled: 1671 crate start dur end editor 121.3 19.6 140.9 picker 131.6 2.3 133.9 picker_preview (absent) command_palette 133.8 2.2 136.0 dev_container 133.8 5.4 139.2 onboarding 137.4 2.5 139.8 settings_profile_selector 136.1 1.8 137.8 theme_selector 134.0 2.3 136.3 ===== HEAD (PR) ===== total schedule end: 158.5s units compiled: 1672 crate start dur end editor 120.5 18.4 138.8 picker 119.5 1.7 121.2 picker_preview 131.2 1.7 132.9 command_palette 121.1 1.9 122.9 dev_container 121.0 3.3 124.3 onboarding 121.1 2.2 123.3 settings_profile_selector 121.2 1.7 122.9 theme_selector 121.2 2.0 123.2 ``` Release Notes: - N/A

TroySigX · 2026-07-02T13:54:03Z

Is there an auto-preview setting?

elramus · 2026-07-02T13:56:45Z

Is there an auto-preview setting?

#56037 (comment)

Overhauls Zed's pickers to make them resizable and give them a preview. Closes zed-industries#8279 ### Background The most requested Zed feature has the last year has been a [Telescope like search box](zed-industries#8279) [discussion](zed-industries#22581). To understand why this is so popular we need to understand search can serve thee goals: - Navigation: fuzzy search is faster & easier then clicking in a file tree - Exploration: example, find a function by a word in its doc comment - Collecting: example, getting a list of functions to change The project search which shows results in a multibuffer is the perfect way to operate on a list of items. Navigation and Exploration need a lot of context around each result and offer fast navigation between them. For both of these live searching is also critical. The `telescope UI` is a picker with a preview to the right or below. It's offered in various editors and IDE's most famously Neovim (through the Telescope plugin), IntelliJ (natively), Helix (natively) and of course VScode (plugins) and it's _many_ forks. While having a UI like that for text search (our project search) is most requested the UX pattern is applied widely, from `find_all_references` to `bookmarks`. It enhances most pickers. Note that we have over 50 different picker modals! The community has tried to build something like this for Zed: - zed-industries#44530 - zed-industries#45307 - zed-industries#46478 - zed-industries#43790 These all became huge PR's that we could not merge for various reasons. This is a really hard feature to integrate in Zed! This PR got started as zed-industries#46478 and supercedes that. ### Design - Extend pickers to support an optional preview with minimal changes to the pickers themselves. - Make pickers resizable. - Complement the existing search do not replace it by having both UI's share the underlying search and allow freely switching between them. - Allow extending the preview to things other then files. - Maintain a clean design on all the pickers. ### Heigh level Implementation overview - Adds an `Option<Preview>` to `Picker` - Gives `PickerDelegate` a method to communicate a preview to the Picker - Overhaul the way pickers are drawn to allow for resizing them. Implemented on the `Shape` and `SizeBouds` structs. - Adds a high level way to draw the `footer` and `editor` so we do not need to change much to the pickers. - Adds a new text finder Picker - Adds a way to take a running search from project search and hand it to the text finder Picker and the other way round - Give the file finder a preview ### Next steps A more detailed list and how to help out will be added to the tracking issue for [Pickes with previews](zed-industries#56037) - Add more previews to more pickers! - Enable selectioning multiple items in pickers and performing actions on those - Open selected items in a multibuffer - Add a way to restore the last picker - Make popovers (picker attached to some menu) resizable as well ## Self-Review Checklist: - [x] I've reviewed my own diff for quality, security, and reliability - [x] Unsafe blocks (if any) have justifying comments - [x] The content adheres to Zed's UI standards ([UX/UI](https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#uiux-checklist) and [icon](https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/main/crates/icons/README.md) guidelines) - [x] Tests cover the new/changed behavior - [x] Performance impact has been considered and is acceptable ## Showcase TODO (will be done post merge) --- Release Notes: - Added resizing via dragging to all picker modals. - Added a preview to the File finder, the preview can be to the right or below. - Added a Text finder picker with a preview as alternative project search UI. The search is shared and allowes switch between UIs while running. --------- Co-authored-by: ozacod <47009516+ozacod@users.noreply.github.com> Co-authored-by: ozacod <ozacod@users.noreply.github.com> Co-authored-by: Danilo Leal <daniloleal09@gmail.com>

…ed-industries#60114) Follow-up to zed-industries#59604 Build stats changes for `cargo clean && RUSTC_WRAPPER= CARGO_BUILD_RUSTC_WRAPPER= cargo build --timings -p zed`: ``` ===== BASE (b3a48e3) ===== total schedule end: 161.5s units compiled: 1671 crate start dur end editor 121.3 19.6 140.9 picker 131.6 2.3 133.9 picker_preview (absent) command_palette 133.8 2.2 136.0 dev_container 133.8 5.4 139.2 onboarding 137.4 2.5 139.8 settings_profile_selector 136.1 1.8 137.8 theme_selector 134.0 2.3 136.3 ===== HEAD (PR) ===== total schedule end: 158.5s units compiled: 1672 crate start dur end editor 120.5 18.4 138.8 picker 119.5 1.7 121.2 picker_preview 131.2 1.7 132.9 command_palette 121.1 1.9 122.9 dev_container 121.0 3.3 124.3 onboarding 121.1 2.2 123.3 settings_profile_selector 121.2 1.7 122.9 theme_selector 121.2 2.0 123.2 ``` Release Notes: - N/A

ozacod added 30 commits January 27, 2026 20:22

search popup implementation.

33e3c49

removed debug logs.

23dcd7b

search is smoother in terms of visual experience.

b36652d

reused search options to remove duplicate.

9344e0f

small improvements

79400f7

global access lock is removed.

e48d6b7

renamed and moved the create.

dbada58

default search options from settings are used.

5e54529

- preview showing all of the file

635bd27

- focus problem is solved.

typing debounce time added.

a426d0d

preview is editable.

fce4fe3

hihlighting for results is matching the style with the preview.

57c7a34

removed duplication for togglefilters action.

9fd34b3

Missing keybindings are added.

0932232

clippy run.

b699040

fix mistake deletion on default-mac.json

b38c1b4

ui improvements.

638e780

syntax highlighting for search results added.

f0dce6f

add resizable panels.

096af04

fix focus on text when modal is opened.

2da6445

multiline search support.

56e5a8a

simplified match type.

336b638

clippy removed unnecessary clones.

cebf035

fix cmd g was not scrolling match list properly.

91496a1

found a new way to hide header without touching editor and element.rs

a23a57d

row is highlighted on preview editor.

8fe7486

replace keybinding enter is only working for replace mode.

2e10aa6

include ignored added.

d62c352

renamed variables to use same ids for equivalent ones in project_search

68d55ab

fix clippy clone on copy.

b3738f5

yara-blue enabled auto-merge June 19, 2026 15:30

merged main

8bc8aa6

yara-blue force-pushed the pickers-with-preview branch from 95c7636 to 8bc8aa6 Compare June 19, 2026 15:34

Add new mac override keymap to CI's mac keybind detector ignore list

c3712ec

yara-blue force-pushed the pickers-with-preview branch 3 times, most recently from b1fbd0b to 1c2cf05 Compare June 19, 2026 15:48

Anthony-Eid approved these changes Jun 19, 2026

View reviewed changes

yara-blue force-pushed the pickers-with-preview branch from 1c2cf05 to 23f53e1 Compare June 19, 2026 17:03

remove TODO!'s (tracked in channel notes) and accidentally included file

85656ab

yara-blue force-pushed the pickers-with-preview branch from bcc40dc to 85656ab Compare June 19, 2026 17:32

yara-blue added this pull request to the merge queue Jun 19, 2026

Merged via the queue into main with commit ccf4058 Jun 19, 2026
34 checks passed

yara-blue deleted the pickers-with-preview branch June 19, 2026 17:46

yara-blue mentioned this pull request Jun 19, 2026

Add Search modal for project-wide text search #46478

Closed

yeskunall mentioned this pull request Jun 22, 2026

Menus and popovers open oversized #59643

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yara-blue mentioned this pull request Jun 24, 2026

Tracking issue for pickers with preview #56037

Open

11 tasks

SomeoneToIgnore mentioned this pull request Jun 29, 2026

Improve overall compilation stats after the telescope picker feature #60114

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SomeoneToIgnore mentioned this pull request Aug 19, 2026

Implement unified palette with all 5 modes #53676

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Add preview to pickers and make them resizable - #59604

Add preview to pickers and make them resizable#59604
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Background

Design

Heigh level Implementation overview

Next steps

Self-Review Checklist:

Showcase

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