🍃 Ethersync
Multiplayer mode for your text editor!
Ethersync enables real-time collaborative editing of local text files. You can use it for pair programming or note-taking, for example. It's the missing real-time complement to Git!
Features
👥 Edit files at the same time, across different text editors
📍 See your peers' cursors and selections
🗃️ Work on entire projects, the way you're used to
🔒 Encrypted peer-to-peer connections, no need for a server
✒️ Local-first: You always have full access, even offline
🧩 Simple JSON-RPC protocol for writing new editor plugins
🚦 Project status
The project is under active development right now. We use it every day, but there's still some bugs to be aware of.
📥 Installation
1. Install the ethersync command
Ethersync works on Linux, macOS, Android, and on the Windows Subsystem for Linux.
Binary releases The releases on GitHub come with precompiled static binaries. Download one and put it somewhere in your shell's PATH : x86_64-unknown-linux-musl for Linux
for Linux universal-apple-darwin for macOS
for macOS aarch64-unknown-linux-musl for Android (use a terminal emulator like Termux)
Arch Linux yay -S ethersync-bin
Nix This repository provides a Nix flake. To put ethersync in your PATH temporarily, run: nix shell github:ethersync/ethersync Make sure to also have it in your PATH when you run the editors.
Via Cargo cargo install ethersync
2. Install an editor plugin
Neovim
VS Code/Codium: Install the "Ethersync" extension from the marketplace
📖 Basic usage
In the directory you want to share:
$ ethersync share To connect to you, another person can run: ethersync join 5-hamburger-endorse Peer connected: adfa90edd932732ddf242f24dc2dcd6156779e69966d432fcb3b9fe3ae9831ab
Another person, in a separate directory (also works on the same computer):
$ ethersync join 5-hamburger-endorse Derived peer from join code. Storing in config (overwriting previous config). Storing peer's address in .ethersync/config. Connected to peer: 5e6b787fff79074735eb9b56939269100de1e37bc7f7a4d29c277cc24f7ee53d
The directories are now connected, and changes will be synced instantly. You can open text files (using editors with an Ethersync plugin), and start collaborating in real time! ✨
🎓 Learn more
Learn more about Ethersync in the documentation.
Watch a 10-minute talk given at FOSDEM 2025.
Watch a (German) 1-hour talk given at MRMCD 2024.
🚧 Community projects
(These are all work-in-progress!)
🔨 Contributing
We'd love to receive your patches and other contributions! Small patches are very welcome as PRs. Before starting to implement a new big feature, please briefly check in with us so we can discuss how it fits in with our ideas for the project.
If you're interested in building new editor plugins, read the editor plugin development guide. For more information about Ethersync's design, refer to the list of decision records.
If you find bugs, please open an issue on Github!
☎️ Contact
Feel free to open a discussion on Github to ask us anything! Other good channels:
Mastodon: @[email protected]
Email: e t hersync @zormit.de
💚 Thanks
Ethersync received funding from NLNet's NGI0 Core Fund throughout 2024.
Thanks to the Prototype Fund and the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space for funding this project in 2025.
Ethersync is based on Automerge, Iroh, and Magic Wormhole.
And finally, thanks to everyone who helped us beta-test, or reported issues!
📜 License
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This project is REUSE compliant, see the headers of each file for licensing information.