Managing Plugins

Lite XL implements many features as plugins. By default, Lite XL comes with a few built-in plugins for essential features such as treeview and workspace, while the Addons package provides more. All plugins can be found at the plugin repository.

Warning

Use caution as plugins may be managed externally by their contributors. The Lite XL team cannot guarantee the safety, stability or quality of community-contributed plugins.

Note

Support for plugins are provided on a best-effort basis. If the plugin is located in another repository, please open any issues / PRs on that repository.

Location

Plugins that come bundled with Lite XL are stored in DATADIR/plugins. DATADIR is the directory where Lite XL’s Lua code is stored.

On macOS, DATADIR is always the application resources directory. On other platforms, Lite XL checks whether lite-xl.exe is inside a directory called bin. If true, Lite XL will set DATADIR as (path to lite-xl.exe)/../share/lite-xl. This is similar to how most programs are structured on Unix-based platforms. Otherwise, Lite XL sets DATADIR as (path to lite-xl.exe)/data.

User plugins should be installed into USERDIR/plugins. USERDIR is the directory where user configuration is stored.

Plugin Managers

lpm is the de-facto plugin manager for Lite XL. It is similar to apt and dnf which provides a command-line interface to manage plugins.

Installing plugins

To install a plugin with lpm, use lpm plugin install. For example, to install lsp, run:

$ lpm plugin install lsp

This will install/update the lsp plugin.

To install themes or libraries, you can use lpm color install and lpm library install respectively.

To install a plugin manually without using plugin managers such as lpm, you need to locate the USERDIR directory in your system. This directory is usually located in the following locations:

Linux / Unix-based systems: ~/.config/lite-xl
Windows: C:/Users/<username>/.config/lite-xl
macOS: /Users/<username>/.config/lite-xl

Open USERDIR in a file manager / shell of your preference and navigate to the plugins folder. Copy the plugin file / directory into the plugins folder, and restart Lite XL.

Different plugins may have different installation instructions. You must consult the installation instructions for each plugin.

Updating plugins

To update plugins with lpm, run lpm upgrade.

$ lpm upgrade

This will update all the plugins to their latest versions.

To update a plugin manually, you can download the latest version and replace the files in the USERDIR/plugins. Do not update plugins installed by lpm manually.

Uninstalling plugins

To uninstall a plugin, run lpm plugin uninstall. For instance, to uninstall lsp, run:

$ lpm plugin uninstall lsp

Uninstalling themes and libraries can be done with lpm color uninstall and lpm library uninstall respectively.

To uninstall a plugin manually, simply delete the corresponding file / directory from USERDIR/plugins. Do not uninstall plugins managed by lpm manually.

Recommended plugins

Here are a list of plugins that most users would want:

Plugin	Use case
align_carets	Align text on multiple carets and selections
autoinsert	Automatically insert closing brackets and quotes
autosave	Automatically saves the file when it is modified
bracketmatch	Highlight matching brackets
editorconfig	EditorConfig support for Lite XL
ephemeral_tabs	Ephemeral tabs (previewing files without creating multiple tabs)
gitdiff_highlight	Git diff gutter
indentguide	Indent guides
lint+	Linter support
litepresence	Discord rich presence
lsp	Language Server support for Lite XL
lspkind	Completion menu kind/type icons for Lite XL LSP
minimap	Minimap
search_ui	Provides a better UI for searching text, based on [widget].
selectionhighlight	Highlight code that matches the selection
settings	Settings GUI for Lite XL (requires the [widget] plugin)
terminal	Integrated terminal in Lite XL.
widgets	Widget toolkit for Lite XL. Needed for lsp and settings.

Feature / Plugin Requests

If no plugins provide the features you wanted, you can request them in the issue tracker. Plugin developers occasionally browse the issue tracker for requests and implement them.

Alternatively, you can take the opportunity to implement the feature yourself, based on our documentation and existing plugins.

Last updated on October 18, 2026

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