Image: Zed Industries / zed.dev Zed 1.18.0 Preview: Refreshed Markdown, Inline C/C++ Debugger Values, and Three New Models
The August 26 Zed preview release adds Grok 4.5 and 4.6, Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite, overhauled Markdown styling, inline debugger values for C/C++, and persistent file finder history.
Zed 1.18.0 dropped as a preview release on August 26 alongside the 1.17.2 stable release. It’s the typical preview package: new models, language improvements, a debugger upgrade, and UI polish landing a week or two ahead of the stable branch.
Three New Models
Grok 4.5 and Grok 4.6 are now available as options in Zed’s AI configuration. Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite joins the Google AI provider lineup. Zed also added support for GPT-5.6’s 1M-token context window on Amazon Bedrock for teams routing through Bedrock rather than directly through OpenAI.
A batch of older Gemini models were removed — the release notes describe them as retired — so if you had a specific Gemini version pinned in your config, check it.
Markdown Preview
The Markdown preview panel gets a visual overhaul this release: tighter typography, better spacing, and rounded backgrounds on inline code. Not a functional change, but the old preview styling had been showing its age. If you use Zed’s preview pane regularly for documentation or notes, it looks better now.
Inline Debugger Values for C and C++
This release extends Zed’s inline debugger value display to C and C++. The feature (already available for other languages) shows variable values directly in the editor gutter while you’re paused at a breakpoint, without having to switch to the variables panel. Single-thread continue controls also arrive in this release.
The debugger step keybindings now match VS Code defaults: F10 for step-over, F11 for step-into. If you’ve been muscle-memory trained on VS Code, you no longer need to remap these.
File Finder History
The file finder now keeps its history across workspace sessions. Open something, close Zed, come back — it’s still in the list. Small change, but the file finder is something most developers hit dozens of times a day, and the cold-start experience when the history resets was always slightly annoying.
Other Changes
Bash Language Server gets configuration support this release. The diff base now has a toggle to switch between HEAD and the default branch, useful when you want to review changes relative to different points. Linux rendering picks up speed through font cache prewarming and glyph caching improvements.
The inline assistant also gets a fix: it was silently doing nothing when a model emitted reasoning before its tool call. That’s now handled correctly.
Full release notes are at zed.dev.