A workaround is to Go To Definition so that Zed reads in the changed file.
Apparently file watching is defunct.

Zed 0.146.5

Zed is currently on v0.176.3, can you update and tell me if you're still seeing the issue?

I'm still unable to find a setting for controlling the notification of filesystem changes to open files ("watching"). It seem that the behavior or Zed is:

• if the editor buffer has no changes, external changes are reflected live
• if the editor does have changes, when the file has been changed externally, there is no notification.

  • only when attempting to save, is this pop-up shown:

    

It would be great to have an option for diffing the on-disk file vs. the editor. JetBrains IDEs do this.

Zed 0.183.10

I'm still unable to find a setting for controlling the notification of filesystem changes to open files ("watching"). It seem that the behavior or Zed is:

* if the editor buffer has no changes, external changes are reflected live

* if the editor does have changes, when the file has been changed externally, there is no notification.
  
  * only when attempting to save, is this pop-up shown:
    ![Image](https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/f57ddbe8-5d8d-4569-9885-dc469fca356c)

It would be great to have an option for diffing the on-disk file vs. the editor. JetBrains IDEs do this.

Zed 0.183.10

I regularly run into these type of issues. Having a file open in the editor with some minor changes and then having either another editor, generator or whatever change the file outside of zed.
Would be great if there would be a merge offered for this.

I also run into this issue when checking out different branches with git, then if there is a new folder it doesn't show up in Zed.

Another issue I frequently encounter is when rebasing, the file buffer sometimes doesn't notice that the file has been updated and so I can't edit the file correctly.

Running git status sometimes alleviates some issues

This is why I have to left Zed. Not usable with Claude Code because when I manually edit files, it does not show changes done by CC.

This is why I have to left Zed. Not usable with Claude Code because when I manually edit files, it does not show changes done by CC.

Same for me with Codex CLI and Gemini CLI

How is this an acceptable behavior for an IDE? There are hundreds of tools that can potentially change the files that you have open.

For example, a pre-commit hook might lint/format a file, you might add an npm dependency on your package.json, you might run uv add to add a python dependency. I would expect zed to show me the changes on the files if I have them open and not rely me to re-open the file.

I do not have this issue on v0.209.6 (macOS Sequoia 15.6). It's probably somehow environment-dependent.

I do not have this issue on v0.209.6 (macOS Sequoia 15.6). It's probably somehow environment-dependent.

I downloaded the latest version and I also seem to not have this problem anymore.

i noticed this issue is very inconsistent, sometimes over ssh i can look at my remote machine and see the changes being applied automatically in the open editor, other times it doesn't, very hard to find a way to repro too