Configuration

Location

Lite XL searches a list of paths to store user configuration, known as USERDIR. The first path that is available will be used.

(path to lite-xl.exe)/user
$LITE_USERDIR
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/lite-xl
$HOME/.config/lite-xl

On Windows, $HOME will be replaced with $USERPROFILE.

User Module

Lite XL is mainly configured through the user module. The user module is a Lua script run by Lite XL during startup, before plugins are loaded. Thus, you can change configuration options, bind shortcut keys, load color schemes, change the fonts among other things.

To modify the user module, you can run the command core:open-user-module. You can also modify the file USERDIR/init.lua directly. Lite XL will reload the file on file change.

Project Module

The project module is an optional module which is loaded from the current project’s directory when Lite XL is started. Project modules can be useful for things like adding custom commands for project-specific build systems, or loading project-specific plugins.

The project module is loaded when the editor starts, after the user module is loaded but before plugins are loaded.

To modify project module, you can run the command core:open-project-module. The command will create a project module if it does not exist.

Settings GUI

Since Lite XL v2.1.0, we started bundling the settings plugin. This plugin provides a GUI to configure Lite XL.

Warning

You mustn’t set the same configuration option in the user module and the Settings GUI at the same time. This can result in undefined behavior.

Fonts

Lite XL comes with JetBrains Mono and Fira Sans by default. JetBrains Mono is used for the editor itself while Fira Sans is used for other UI elements.

To change the fonts used by the editor, you can change the variable style.font and style.code_font. These variables are responsible for the UI font and code font respectively.

To load a font, you can use renderer.font.load(). This function allows you to load a font file as long as it is supported by FreeType. The function takes in the path to the font file and the pixel size of the font.

When displaying text with multiple languages, multiple fonts are often required. Lite XL supports fallback fonts by using the function renderer.font.group(). This function takes in a table of fonts loaded by renderer.font.load(). Lite XL will attempt to render fonts based on the order the fonts are added to the table.

For this example, we’ll load Noto Sans Mono, which is located in /usr/share/fonts/noto/NotoSansMono-Regular.ttf and set it as our code font.

local style = require "core.style"
-- SCALE is the pixel scaling required for the current DPI setup.
-- This converts the font size from points to pixels.
style.code_font = renderer.font.load("/usr/share/fonts/noto/NotoSansMono-Regular.ttf", 15 * SCALE)

Next, we’ll also load Noto Sans SC, which is located in /usr/share/fonts/noto-cjk/NotoSansCJK-Regular.ttc and use it as fallback.

local style = require "core.style"
-- do not ever do style.code_font = { style.code_font, ... }
-- style.code_font can be a font group and lite-xl does not
-- support nested font groups!
style.code_font = renderer.font.group {
  renderer.font.load("/usr/share/fonts/noto/NotoSansMono-Regular.ttf", 15 * SCALE),
  renderer.font.load("/usr/share/fonts/noto-cjk/NotoSansCJK-Regular.ttc", 15 * SCALE)
}

Tip

Lite XL does not support using a specfific face in a TrueType collection (.ttc) file. Only the first face can be used.

To change the code font, navigate to the “Core” tab and expand the “Editor” section. The first entry should be a list of code fonts used by the editor. The fonts option under the Editor section

To add a new font, click the “Add” button. A font selector will be shown.

To choose a font, press the “Mono” button and select a font from the list. The “All” button allows you to select non-monospace fonts.

A demo text will be shown at the textbox on the top of the selector. To change the antialiasing settings of the font, click on the dropdown to the left. To change the hinting settings of the font, click on the dropdown to the right. The changes will be reflected automatically on the preview window. Press “Save” to add the font or “Cancel” to go back.

If you have more than one fonts set up, you can change the fallback order by pressing the “‹” and “›” buttons. The buttons to change font ordering

Keyboard shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts are managed by the core.keymap module. This module maps keyboard shortcuts to one or more commands, where each command has a predicate that determine whether it can be run.

For a list of default keyboard shortcuts, check out these pages:

Adding a keyboard shortcut

To add keyboard shortcuts, you can use keymap.add().

For example, to bind Ctrl+M to move the cursor backwards and then upwards, do:

local keymap = require "core.keymap"
keymap.add {
  ["ctrl+m"] = "doc:move-to-previous-char"
}
keymap.add {
  ["ctrl+m"] = "doc:move-to-previous-line"
}

Lite XL will automatically execute both commands in the order that they’re added.

Alternatively, to override a keyboard shortcut completely, add true on the second parameter of keybind.add().

local keymap = require "core.keymap"
keymap.add {
  ["ctrl+m"] = "doc:move-to-previous-char"
}
keymap.add({
  ["ctrl+m"] = "doc:move-to-previous-line"
}, true)

This will cause Lite XL to only run core:move-to-previous-line when Ctrl+M is pressed.

Navigate to the “Keybindings” tab. The keybindings tab

Scroll until you find the entry containing the command you want to bind to and click on it. In recent versions of the Settings plugin, you can also search for commands with the text box on top. In this example, we’ll pick doc:move-to-previous-char.

To add a keybind, press the “Add” and press the key combination that you want to bind to. Afterwards, press “Save”. The dialog to assign keyboard shortcuts

If the keyboard shortcut is set properly, you will see the updated keyboard shortcut on the “Bindings” section at the right. The keybind tab with changed keybinds

To replace previous keyboard shortcuts, simply delete any existing keyboard shortcut via the “Remove” button, then re-add it.

Removing a keyboard shortcut

To remove an existing keyboard shortcut, you can use keymap.unbind().

In this example, we will unbind Ctrl+M.

local keymap = require "core.keymap"
keymap.unbind("ctrl+m", "doc:move-to-previous-line")
keymap.unbind("ctrl+m", "doc:move-to-previous-char")

This will unbind the two commands from Ctrl+M.

Alternatively, to unbind all commands from Ctrl+M, you can omit the second parameter to keymap.unbind().

local keymap = require "core.keymap"
keymap.unbind "ctrl+m"
keymap.unbind "ctrl+m"

Navigate to the “Keybindings” tab. Screenshot showing the keybindings tab

To remove a keyboard shortcut, select the shortcut you want to remove and press the “Remove” button. Afterwards, press the “Save” button to save the changes. Screenshot showing the keybind changer

Tip

On X11, Lite XL interprets keypresses based on their physical location, regardless of the keyboard layout set in your DE settings. Tools such as xmodmap will therefore have no effect; instead you’ll have to modify your keymap in Lite XL directly.

For example, to remap Caps Lock to Ctrl, add this to your user module:

local modkeys = require("core.modkeys-" .. (PLATFORM == "Mac OS X" and "macos" or "generic"))
modkeys.map["capslock"] = "ctrl" -- this maps capslock to ctrl
table.insert(modkeys.keys, "capslock") -- this enables capslock as modifier
modkeys.map["left ctrl"] = "capslock" -- this maps left ctrl to capslock

Themes

The default theme is a dark theme. Themes are implemented as plugins that changes the styling variables of Lite XL.

This can be changed with core.reload_module() and loading the appropriate theme file.

To load the theme summer, add core.reload_module "colors.summer".

core.reload_module "colors.summer"

Other options

There are a lot of configuration options that can be modified. A list of these options can be found in data/core/config.lua, but we’ll list a few common ones here.

Indentation

To change the indentation size and type, set config.indent_size and config.tab_type respectively.

local config = require "core.config"
config.indent_size = 4 -- set indentation to 4
config.tab_type =      -- "soft" for spaces, "hard" for tabs

Window decoration

If you’re on platforms such as Wayland where window decoration may be client drawn, you can set config.borderless to true. This will let Lite XL draw its own window decoration.

local config = require "core.config"
-- enable custom window borders
config.borderless = true

Project files limit

When opening large directories, Lite XL will often complain about reaching the project file limit. This is because Lite XL becomes slower when it needs to index these files on startup.

If your filesystem has good performance, you can increase this limit by setting config.max_project_files to something else. The default value is 2000.

local config = require "core.config"
-- set max project files to 5000
config.max_project_files = 5000

Ignoring files

Lite XL does not index certain files and directories by default, such as version control and executables. This can be modified by changing config.ignore_files. This value is a table of Lua patterns. For directories, the pattern ends with a forward slash (/). For files, the pattern ends with the end anchor ($).

local config = require "core.config"
-- ignore .data/
table.insert(config.ignore_files, "^%.data/")

Caret

You can disable or change the blinking rate of the caret.

local config = require "core.config"
config.disable_blink = true -- disable caret blinking
config.blink_period = 0.4 -- change caret blink rate

FPS (Frame rate)

The default frame rate is set to 60. If this causes an issue, you can set it via config.fps.

local config = require "core.config"
-- set FPS to 30
config.fps = 30

Transitions

You can disable any animations/transitions by setting config.transitions to false. To disable individual transitions, you can set any member of config.disabled_transitions to true.

local config = require "core.config"
-- disable all transitions
config.transitions = false
-- disable commandview and scroll transitions
config.disabled_transitions = {
  commandview = true,
  scroll = true
}

To change the animation rate, set config.animation_rate.

local config = require "core.config"
-- slow down the animations to half speed
config.animation_rate = 0.5

Other options

Options	Description
`max_log_items`	Maximum number of log items to store before discarding them.
`message_timeout`	Time (seconds) to show each message on the StatusView.
`mouse_wheel_scroll`	Number of pixels per “scroll”.
`animate_drag_scroll`	Enable smooth scrolling.
`force_scrollbar_status`	Always expand (`"expanded"`) or hide (`"contracted"`) the scrollbar.
`file_size_limit`	File size limit (MB) before Lite XL refuses to load it.
`symbol_pattern`	Lua pattern used by Lite XL to find symbols.
`non_word_chars`	A pattern used to find non-word characters.
`undo_merge_timeout`	Time (seconds) before Lite XL merges edits to form a single undo step.
`max_undos`	Number of undo to store per document.
`max_tabs`	Number of tabs to show before overflowing.
`always_show_tabs`	If true, always show tabs even if only one file is open.
`highlight_current_line`	Highlights the current line.
`line_height`	The spacing between each line.
`keep_newline_whitespace`	If true, removes any line that only contains whitespace (space, tabs, etc.)
`line_limit`	An advisory limit for characters per line.
`tab_close_button`	Shows or hides the tab close button for each tab.
`max_clicks`	Maximum number of clicks you can perform in the editor.

Plugins

Since the user and project module loads before any plugins, you can configure or disable any plugins in the user and project modules. Plugins obtain their configuration from a table in the config.plugins table. You can add code to user module that modifies the table.

To disable a plugin, you need to set the associated config.plugins entry to false. This tells Lite XL to not load the plugin on startup. It will not load nor unload the plugin from the current instance.

This allows the plugins to be loaded and toggled without a restart.

In this example, we’ll enable the drawwhitespace plugin and set it to only draw whitespaces in the selected text.

local config = require "core.config"
config.plugins.drawwhitespace = {
  show_selected_only = true
}

To disable the plugin, simply assign config.plugins.drawwhitespace to false.

local config = require "core.config"
config.plugins.drawwhitespace = false

Last updated on October 18, 2026

Introduction Managing Plugins