DHH merged a PR that makes Plain the default editor for config and text files on new Omarchy installs, starting with the next version, Omarchy Central reports. Neovim stays preinstalled.
Plain’s README calls it “the editor you don’t have to learn.” Ctrl+S saves, Ctrl+Z undoes, Ctrl+F finds. It follows your theme and font, and it highlights Lua, hyprlang/INI, TOML, JSON, YAML, shell and CSS. You get one window and one file, with no tabs, no plugins and no projects.
The part I like is how carefully it treats a config file, because “a config file is read by a program that won’t forgive a surprise”:
- It saves atomically, writing to a temp file and then renaming it, and it follows symlinks so your linked dotfiles stay linked.
- It keeps line endings, a UTF-8 BOM and the final newline exactly as they were. If you open and save without editing, you get the same bytes back.
- It checks the file on disk right before saving and asks you if something else changed it.
- It won’t open a file that isn’t valid UTF-8. Root-owned files open read-only, and you edit them through sudoedit.
It works for git commit, sudoedit and crontab too, and over SSH or on a TTY it falls back to vi. Existing installs aren’t switched over: a migration pins nvim if you never picked an editor. If you want to try Plain, go to Setup > Default > Editor. It’s C++ and Qt Quick under the MIT license.
My take
I’ll keep living in Neovim. But this is the right default for somebody new to Omarchy who just needs to change one line in hyprland.conf. Those atomic, byte-for-byte saves are something I’d like to see in every editor.
God Bless, and Happy hacking!
