Space is a menu

So far every command you’ve learned has been a single key or a short sequence: w, d, miw. Helix keeps one key free for everything that doesn’t fit that pattern. Press Space in normal mode and, after a moment, a menu pops up listing what you can press next.

Helix calls this space mode. It’s less a mode than a menu: Space followed by one more key runs a command, and the popup means you never have to memorize the list. Most of the entries open a picker — a fuzzy-searchable list with a live preview next to it. Files, open buffers, the jump list, and every command Helix knows all have one.

Click into the editor and press Space. Read through the menu, then hit Escape to close it again. Nothing happened — the menu waits for a second key, and Escape cancels it.

Some of the entries won’t do anything in this browser build: the symbol and diagnostic pickers need a language server, and there isn’t one here. The ones this lesson covers all work:

• Space f — the file picker
• Space b — the buffer picker
• Space ? — the command palette