The telemetry section of the TOS explicitly clarifies that that does not restrict their ability to use the data that is sent to them.
> Customer may configure the Software to opt out of the collection of certain Telemetry Processed locally by the Software itself, but Zed may still collect, generate, and Process Telemetry on Zed’s servers.
Note that they have (or did have, I haven't used their editor in awhile) an AI tab completion feature... it's safe to assume that all of the code you edit is sent to them at least when that is enabled.
>The telemetry section of the TOS explicitly clarifies that that does not restrict their ability to use the data that is sent to them.
Hopefully it does restrict them being sent to them in the first place.
I also found there are a couple of "Chromium" style builds.
>Note that they have (or did have, I haven't used their editor in awhile) an AI tab completion feature... it's safe to assume that all of the code you edit is sent to them at least when that is enabled.
There's also an option to turn ai features off. At which point of course, nvim is just as good :)
What I understand reading this is that if you use their online services, incl AI-agents, llm based tab-completion, auto-updates etc, you send data to their servers, and on that part they run analytics. Frankly, this is what I would expect anyway, ie if I disable telemetry locally, it would affect what I do locally, ie no data about how I use my software locally would leave the machine, but if I sent data to some server I would not expect people not to run analytics on their servers.
> AI tab completion feature... it's safe to assume that all of the code you edit is sent to them
Yes, this is quite obvious, how else could they provide AI tab completion? I hope anybody understands this before using sth like this. They do specify that "[...] telemetry expressly does not include Customer Data" though.
> They do specify that "[...] telemetry expressly does not include Customer Data" though.
Yes and no. They first grant themselves a license "to derive and generate Telemetry" from the users copyrighted material, something that they only need if they're deriving it from the actual creative works the customer updates, and not just the metadata about them.
And they define telemetry extremely broadly, effectively "anything useful for lawful business purposes except customer data".
So this agreement would seem to cover things like "an update to an AI model trained off of your code" or even "an AI summary of what you're working on and any relevant business information contained therein". As long as they process it to something new, it's not "customer data" (a term defined narrowly in the agreement). I don't expect that they are doing that, but I think they've given themselves permission to. The agreement is far too broad.
I agree that I expect that they are deriving metadata, and would expect that regardless of this agreement, but this agreement doesn't seem necessary for that.
I was willing to give it another go. Now I read on this thread that it installs tons of node packages (so much for Rust native code) and even Go packages, and gets many extra processes running along with it.
TL;DR: Mix of language tooling, unsigned proprietary blobs, corrupted and/or GLIBC-dependent files, redundant copies of already-installed executables. The Node packages especially are able to run scripts on install. Personal preference aside, might also create issues with security laws, certifications. All without user consent.
Issues opened in January and June 2024. They've been rejected, closed, and opened a couple times since then. No changes directly improving this yet as of April 2026.
Personally, I think even if they eventually fix this, given the attitude shown towards their users' machines, I should probably just use an editor where I don't have to worry about it.
The telemetry section of the TOS explicitly clarifies that that does not restrict their ability to use the data that is sent to them.
> Customer may configure the Software to opt out of the collection of certain Telemetry Processed locally by the Software itself, but Zed may still collect, generate, and Process Telemetry on Zed’s servers.
Note that they have (or did have, I haven't used their editor in awhile) an AI tab completion feature... it's safe to assume that all of the code you edit is sent to them at least when that is enabled.
>The telemetry section of the TOS explicitly clarifies that that does not restrict their ability to use the data that is sent to them.
Hopefully it does restrict them being sent to them in the first place.
I also found there are a couple of "Chromium" style builds.
>Note that they have (or did have, I haven't used their editor in awhile) an AI tab completion feature... it's safe to assume that all of the code you edit is sent to them at least when that is enabled.
There's also an option to turn ai features off. At which point of course, nvim is just as good :)
What I understand reading this is that if you use their online services, incl AI-agents, llm based tab-completion, auto-updates etc, you send data to their servers, and on that part they run analytics. Frankly, this is what I would expect anyway, ie if I disable telemetry locally, it would affect what I do locally, ie no data about how I use my software locally would leave the machine, but if I sent data to some server I would not expect people not to run analytics on their servers.
> AI tab completion feature... it's safe to assume that all of the code you edit is sent to them
Yes, this is quite obvious, how else could they provide AI tab completion? I hope anybody understands this before using sth like this. They do specify that "[...] telemetry expressly does not include Customer Data" though.
> They do specify that "[...] telemetry expressly does not include Customer Data" though.
Yes and no. They first grant themselves a license "to derive and generate Telemetry" from the users copyrighted material, something that they only need if they're deriving it from the actual creative works the customer updates, and not just the metadata about them.
And they define telemetry extremely broadly, effectively "anything useful for lawful business purposes except customer data".
So this agreement would seem to cover things like "an update to an AI model trained off of your code" or even "an AI summary of what you're working on and any relevant business information contained therein". As long as they process it to something new, it's not "customer data" (a term defined narrowly in the agreement). I don't expect that they are doing that, but I think they've given themselves permission to. The agreement is far too broad.
I agree that I expect that they are deriving metadata, and would expect that regardless of this agreement, but this agreement doesn't seem necessary for that.
That should be off by default. That alone is a "I won't use this" for me.
I was willing to give it another go. Now I read on this thread that it installs tons of node packages (so much for Rust native code) and even Go packages, and gets many extra processes running along with it.
Modern software. That's why I stick with Emacs or Neovim.
https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/7054
https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/12589
TL;DR: Mix of language tooling, unsigned proprietary blobs, corrupted and/or GLIBC-dependent files, redundant copies of already-installed executables. The Node packages especially are able to run scripts on install. Personal preference aside, might also create issues with security laws, certifications. All without user consent.
Issues opened in January and June 2024. They've been rejected, closed, and opened a couple times since then. No changes directly improving this yet as of April 2026.
Personally, I think even if they eventually fix this, given the attitude shown towards their users' machines, I should probably just use an editor where I don't have to worry about it.