Microsoft has released version 1.2.0 of ‘Edit,’ its new open-source command-line text editor, pushing a significant update just one month after the tool’s initial reveal at the Build 2025 conference. The release delivers substantial performance enhancements, new community-driven features, and numerous bug fixes, signaling an aggressive development pace for a tool designed to fill a decades-old gap in the Windows operating system.
The rapid iteration underscores Microsoft’s commitment to providing a modern, native text editing solution for developers and power users working directly within the Windows command line. While a seemingly simple utility, the project’s active, open-source development and focus on core performance suggest a broader strategy of improving the foundational developer experience on Windows.
This update moves ‘Edit’ from a promising concept to a rapidly maturing tool. For users who perform quick edits or manage configuration files without wanting to launch a full IDE or rely on third-party installs, the project’s trajectory is making it an increasingly viable and powerful first-party option.
From Blazing Speed to Quality of Life
The centerpiece of the version 1.2.0 release is a dramatic overhaul of the editor’s performance, particularly when handling large files. According to the official release notes, the logic for seeking across lines of text has been optimized to be hundreds of times faster. The developers highlighted the real-world impact of this change, stating, “If you had issues browsing 1GB+ files before: Now you don’t. On my CPU it runs at up to 160GB/s!”.
Beyond the speed improvements, the update introduces several quality-of-life features sourced from community feedback. The Open/Save file dialog now supports filename autocompletion, streamlining file navigation. The character encoding picker, a common point of confusion in text editors, has been redesigned with a fuzzy search field to simplify finding the correct format, such as Shift_JIS. In a small but practical touch for debugging, non-standard control characters are now highlighted in yellow, making them easy to spot at a glance.
Filling a Decades-Old Void in Windows
As Microsoft explained in a blog post, the ‘Edit’ project was born from a simple but long-standing necessity, as modern 64-bit versions of Windows have lacked a built-in, default command-line editor since the days of MS-DOS. This left users to install third-party tools or use editors within environments like the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), which Microsoft recently open-sourced.
In a detailed rationale posted on Hacker News, the project’s lead contributor elaborated on the decision to build a new tool rather than adopt an existing one. The team required an editor with a small binary size suitable for bundling with all Windows variants, strong Unicode support, and native integration with modern terminal standards.
While considering popular options, the contributor explained that some were not a perfect fit, concluding that while “micro was probably the one we wanted to use the most, … it’s just too large.” By writing ‘Edit’ in Rust, the team could achieve the desired performance and small footprint while ensuring first-class support for the Windows platform.
An Open-Source Bet on Community Collaboration
From the outset, ‘Edit’ has been a community-focused project, with its source code available on its GitHub page. The version 1.2.0 release notes are filled with acknowledgments to community developers for bug fixes and feature contributions, demonstrating that the open-source model is bearing fruit. The development team even opened the announcement with a playful nod to a famous Microsoft moment, writing, “As Steve Ballmer famously said: Fixes! Fixes! Fixes! We do one better and also have new features”.
This collaborative energy follows a mixed but engaged initial reception. When first announced, some developers questioned the need for another editor in a crowded field, while others praised the initiative for providing a simple, dependency-free tool for native Windows workflows. The project’s rapid progress and clear responsiveness to user feedback appear to be building a dedicated following and validating Microsoft’s decision to foster the tool’s growth in the open.
Ultimately, the rapid evolution of ‘Edit’ is more significant than the tool itself. It represents a focused effort by Microsoft to refine the core, native developer toolchain on its own operating system. By building a modern, fast, and open-source solution to a classic problem, the company is sending a clear signal that it is invested in improving every layer of the developer experience on Windows, from complex integrated development environments down to the humble command-line editor.
