Why hackers moved from JetBrains to Zed

1 hacker described this switch in public comments. Their words, with links to the originals.

JetBrains 1 hacker criticizes it
→
Zed 12 hackers recommend it

What hackers said about the move

“I moved from JetBrains and am genuinely happy.”
_badmike, 2026-04-29original comment ↗

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JetBrains vs Zed

JetBrainsZed
Hackers who recommend012
Hackers who criticize12
Moved away from it11
Moved to it010

Counts are distinct hackers in the sampled comments, not market share.

Criticism of JetBrains

No further criticism of JetBrains captured yet.

Praise for Zed

“I've also customized Zed's UI to optimize for reading and reviewing code”
throw2ih020, 2026-07-10original comment ↗
“Zed + Terminal threads (love this!) + Remote machine”
throwaway888abc, 2026-06-05original comment ↗
“We started using LLMs heavily at work this year and I switched from Vim to Zed to help with that.”
vinc, 2026-05-26original comment ↗
“I've been very happy with Zed, and that was before it had as many features as it does now.”
insane_dreamer, 2026-05-19original comment ↗
“I switched from VSCode to Zed, which has a helix mode built-in and it works very well.”
16bitvoid, 2026-05-13original comment ↗

Other moves from JetBrains

    Other moves to Zed