Manual Setup

We provide extensions or configuration files for different editors to better support .slint files.

Editors

• Visual Studio Code
• Kate
• Qt Creator
• Helix
• (Neo-)Vim
• Sublime Text
• JetBrains IDE
• Zed

If your favorite editor is not in the list of supported editors, it just means we did not test it, not that it doesn’t work. We do provide a language server for Slint that should work with most editor that supports the Language Server Protocol (LSP). If you do test your editor with it, we would be happy to accept a pull request that adds instructions here.

Slint Language Server (slint-lsp)

Most modern editors use the Language Server Protocol (LSP) ↗ to add support for different programming languages. Slint provides an LSP implementation with the slint-lsp binary.

Installation

There are multiple ways to install slint-lsp:

From pre-built binaries (with cargo binstall):

The fastest way to install slint-lsp is with cargo binstall ↗, which automatically downloads and installs the pre-built binary:

cargo binstall slint-lsp

bash

From source:

If you have a Rust toolchain installed, use cargo install:

cargo install slint-lsp

bash

To install the development version from the git repository:

cargo install slint-lsp --git https://github.com/slint-ui/slint --force

bash

Make sure the required dependencies are found. On Debian-like systems install them with the following command:

sudo apt install -y build-essential libx11-xcb1 libx11-dev libxcb1-dev libxkbcommon0 libinput10 libinput-dev libgbm1 libgbm-dev

shell

From pre-built binaries (manual download):

You can also download the pre-built binaries from the Slint GitHub releases page:

1. Go to the latest Slint release ↗
2. From “Assets” download the appropriate slint-lsp-* archive for your architecture, for example:
   • Linux x86-64: slint-lsp-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz ↗.
   • Windows x86-64: slint-lsp-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.zip ↗.
   • Mac (Intel & Apple Silicon) slint-lsp-universal-apple-darwin.tar.gz ↗.
   • ARM binaries are also available for Linux and Windows (named aarch64 or armv7 respectively).
3. Uncompress the downloaded archive into a location of your choice (preferably somewhere in your PATH, so that it becomes available in your command line).

Editor configuration

Once you have slint-lsp installed, configure your editor to use the binary, no arguments are required. See our list of editor configurations for details. If your editor is not on this list, please refer to your editors documentation for details on how to set up language servers.

Formatting Slint files

Slint files can be auto-formatted with slint-lsp in the following ways:

• slint-lsp format <path> - reads the file and outputs the formatted version to stdout
• slint-lsp format -i <path> - reads the file and saves the output to the same file
• slint-lsp format /dev/stdin - using /dev/stdin you can achieve the special behavior of reading from stdin and writing to stdout

Note that .slint files are formatted, while .md and .rs files are searched for .slint blocks. All other files are left untouched.

If you have slint-lsp configured in your editor, you should be able to format .slint files via your editor as well.

Slint Live Preview (slint-viewer)

Slint’s live preview feature lets you see your code changes in real-time. This is a really powerful way to iterate quickly on your UI without having to recompile anything.

If you have slint-lsp configured in your editor, you can launch the live preview directly from your editor.

Example in Neovim:

Running slint-viewer from the terminal

To open the live preview from a terminal, run slint-viewer --auto-reload <path/to/file.slint>. See the Slint Viewer page for installation, screenshots, and all command-line options.

Example on the Printer Demo ↗

Additional resources

• Slint Plugin for (Neo)vim ↗
• Slint TreeSitter Grammar ↗
• Editor Configuration Source ↗