Editora v0.23.0

Editora 0.22.0 docs. You are reading an archived version, kept so links from that release keep working. Read the 0.23.0 docs →

Troubleshooting

Doctor

View: Doctor in the command palette (also linked from the Welcome page) opens a full-tab health report of every external command Editora’s features rely on, in the spirit of flutter doctor. It covers Git and the GitHub CLI (including whether gh is signed in), ripgrep, the preview and diagram tools (mmdc, maid, Graphviz, PlantUML, Typst), every enabled language server (with ShellCheck and shfmt under the Shell server), the debug adapters (java-debug, debugpy, js-debug), the Run interpreters (with a JDK 25 check for Java), the build tools, the selected AI agent CLI, elevated save, browsers, and the in-app installer’s prerequisites.

Each row shows the resolved command and its version where available. When something is off, the row carries a plain-language tip plus an Install… button (the in-app installer) or a Settings… link straight to the right page. A feature you have switched off shows as a gray informational row and is never probed, so Doctor doesn’t nag you about tools you don’t want. All probes run off the UI thread, and only when you open or refresh the screen.

Start here when something that should work doesn’t: it answers “is the tool installed, is it the version I think, and is Editora looking at the right one” in one pass.

A launcher is blocked on first run

Installers are currently unsigned, so the operating system stops the first launch until you allow it. You only do this once.

  • macOS (15 and later): open Editora once and dismiss the warning, then go to System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll to the Security section, and click Open Anyway next to the Editora message. Confirm, and it launches normally from then on. On macOS 14 and earlier, Control-click the app in Finder and choose Open instead.
  • Windows: in the SmartScreen dialog, click More info, then Run anyway.

External tools aren’t found

Language servers, debug adapters, git, mmdc, and the file runner are external programs Editora launches. A GUI-launched app inherits a stripped PATH that often misses Homebrew, npm, and version-manager directories, so a tool that works in your terminal may look “not found” in the app.

Editora rebuilds the PATH from your login shell plus the usual install locations before launching anything, which recovers most setups (including nvm/fnm/asdf per-version bins). If a tool still isn’t found:

  • Set its absolute path in the relevant Settings page (LSP, Debugging, Mermaid).
  • Confirm it runs from a plain login shell, since that’s the PATH Editora reads.
  • On Windows there’s no login-shell convention, so prefer setting absolute paths.

A language server starts but does nothing

The status bar shows an LSP: <server> segment and a loading bar while a server initializes. If it never settles, restart servers with LSP: Restart Language Servers (lsp.restartServers). For Java specifically, a stale jdtls process from a previous run can hold its workspace lock; the loading bar clearing is the sign the handshake completed.

A project’s tools don’t run in its container

A project’s tools run in a container only when all of these hold:

  • Run commands on the remote host is on in Settings → Remote.
  • The container is running, and one of its bind mounts covers the project folder. A dev container is found only when the project folder itself has a .devcontainer folder or a .devcontainer.json file.
  • You allowed that container. Not Now holds until you restart Editora, and so does going back with Containers: Run This Project’s Tools Here. Picking the container with Containers: Run This Project’s Tools in a Container… allows it at once.

Editora looks for a dev container when the project opens and when its window comes back to the front, at most every 30 seconds, so one started meanwhile is picked up once you switch back to the window. If the picker says no containers are running, check that the Container engine in Settings → Remote names the engine you use (docker or podman) and that it lists your container in a terminal.

A debug session that cannot reach its port in the container or WSL distribution needs nc, bash or python3 in it; see Ports and debuggers.

A WSL project misses outside changes

Windows cannot watch a folder on the \\wsl.localhost share. Editora watches a WSL project from inside the distribution, but only while the project’s tools run there. Allow the distribution when asked, and install inotify-tools in it for changes to show at once rather than within a few seconds. See Outside changes in WSL.

Shell scripts show no problems or don’t format

The Bash language server needs two helper programs: ShellCheck for diagnostics and shfmt for Format Document. Without them a script looks clean and Format Document changes nothing. The status bar says so when you open a script or format one, and the Bash / Shell card in Settings → LSP and the Doctor show whether each is found. Install them with the Install… buttons there, or with Install: ShellCheck and shfmt (install.shellTools) in the palette. See ShellCheck and shfmt.

If ShellCheck runs but ignores a .shellcheckrc, the file is probably in a subfolder of the project; ShellCheck reads it only from the project folder or above. See Where ShellCheck finds .shellcheckrc.

The server’s own warnings, such as a helper it could not find, are in the Debug Log (below).

Seeing errors in a packaged build

A packaged app has no visible console. Editora captures its logging and uncaught exceptions into a Debug Log:

  • Open it with Settings → Advanced → Show Debug Log… or view.debugLog.
  • It also mirrors to editora-session.log in your config folder, so it survives a crash for a bug report.

The message log (click the status-bar message, or view.messageLog) keeps a session history of the transient status-bar messages.

After a crash or an interrupted save

  • Unsaved edits. If Editora did not close normally (a crash, a kill, a logout, a power cut), the next launch opens Recover Unsaved Edits with the text of every tab that had unsaved changes. See crash recovery. Reopen the list any time with file.recoverUnsavedEdits.
  • A save that did not finish. Some files are overwritten in place rather than replaced. While that happens their previous contents are held in save-backups/ in the config folder. If Editora stops in the middle, the next launch shows an Unfinished Save dialog that names the backup and offers Restore Previous Contents, Keep Current File, or Decide Later. Keep Current File deletes the backup. When the file itself is gone, the backup is the only copy left and that button reads Delete Backup.
  • Save as Administrator. The file is backed up beside itself (<name>.editora-backup) before it is overwritten, and put back if the write fails. If it cannot be put back either, the status bar names the backup, and the next administrator save of that file is refused until you restore or remove it.
  • A refactoring that moves or deletes files. If Editora is interrupted in the middle of one, opening the project again shows an Interrupted Refactoring dialog that lists the files that were moved aside and offers to put them back.
  • A damaged config file. A config file that is empty or unreadable at startup is copied to <name>.corrupt.bak and reported in the status bar rather than reset silently. See Configuration.

Two editors show different settings

Two Editora processes on the same config folder (the second started with --new-instance) do not overwrite each other’s data, but each one reads the other’s changes only when it starts. Restart the one that looks stale. See Configuration.

Settings sync shows “Sync ⚠”

The status-bar segment means the last automatic sync failed; click it to open Settings → Sync, where the Status row gives the reason. Automatic syncs never prompt for credentials, so a repository that needs a password or an SSH passphrase fails until a credential helper or an SSH agent can supply it. Run Settings Sync: Sync Now (sync.now) to try with your credential helper. See Settings sync.

A file shows the wrong characters

Editora reads a file as UTF-8 unless a byte-order mark or an .editorconfig charset rule says otherwise. A file in some other encoding still opens without losing any bytes, but its accented or non-Latin text can look garbled, and the encoding in the status bar is drawn in the warning colour. Click it and choose Reopen with Encoding… with the file’s real encoding (Shift_JIS, windows-1251, GBK and so on). Editora remembers the choice for that file. See File encodings.

Performance

Editora aims to stay responsive on large files. Highlighting and the minimap turn off automatically at about 5 MB, and files of about 50 MB open read-only with a capped load. A file of 5 MB or more that would not fit in the memory that is left (typically a second or third very large file) opens the same way, as a read-only slice of its first part; close other large tabs and reopen it to edit it. Lines longer than 20,000 characters are not syntax-highlighted, though the rest of the file is. A file with a line of 10,000 characters or a long run without spaces (minified code, an embedded image) opens unwrapped even where word wrap is on; View: Toggle Word Wrap wraps it anyway. Find in a very large file searches in the background and holds at most 100,000 matches around the current one, so the count can read “N of 100,000+”; Next, Previous, Replace, and Replace All still reach every match. If editing or scrolling feels heavy:

  • Check whether a language server is busy (the LSP loading bar).
  • Try Simple UI mode (view.toggleSimpleMode), which drops the gutter, minimap, and the heavier features.
  • The native builds set conservative heap and GC options and bake in an AOT class cache for faster startup; a missing cache just falls back to a normal start.

Reset or isolate your config

  • Reset to Defaults in Settings → Advanced resets every preference, including the keymap choice, which goes back to Emacs. Text zoom is kept, and your key rebinds stay stored with the keymap you made them in, so they apply again when you switch back to it. The previous preferences are first saved as settings.json.before-reset-<date>.bak in the config folder, and the status bar names the file; copy it back over settings.json while Editora is closed to undo the reset.
  • Export Configuration… zips the active config folder for a backup or bug report.
  • Run with --dev or --config-dir <path> to use a separate config without touching your everyday one. See Configuration and the command-line reference.

Editora 0.13.0 quits instantly on startup

If you are on 0.13.0, upgrade to 0.13.1 or later. 0.13.0 crashed a fraction of a second into startup, intermittently, on any CPU without AVX-512 (most consumer Intel from the 12th generation onward, and every AMD before Zen 4). It is fixed in 0.13.1, and there is no workaround worth applying on the old build.

If you are still stuck, open an issue and attach the Debug Log.