---
title: "using c# in zed"
pubDate: 'Sep 21 2025'
description: ""
draft: false
---

three weeks ago I decided to try out the [Zed IDE](https://zed.dev/) after hearing good stuff about it from friends and colleagues.

using it while working has been pretty nice so far, it feels super slick, but for some reason I've "struggled" a bit while coding in C#.

when I've got C# files open I've gotten the following error:

```bash
Language server error: omnisharp

oneshot canceled
-- stderr--
A fatal error occurred. The required library libhostfxr.dylib could not be found.
If this is a self-contained application, that library should exist in [/Users/sid/Library/Application Support/Zed/extensions/work/csharp/omnisharp-v1.39.13/].
If this is a framework-dependent application, install the runtime in the global location [/usr/local/share/dotnet/x64] or use the DOTNET_ROOT environment variable to specify the runtime location or register the runtime location in [/etc/dotnet/install_location].

The .NET runtime can be found at:
  - https://aka.ms/dotnet-core-applaunch?missing_runtime=true&arch=arm64&rid=osx.11.4-arm64&apphost_version=6.0.0-preview.7.21317.1
```

after a while of troubleshooting and digging online I came across this [GitHub issue](https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/8352) - which solved it for me!

In short, open up `/etc/dotnet/install_location` and change the value from `/usr/local/share/dotnet/x64` to `/usr/local/share/dotnet`. Additionally, there was another workaround which could be implemented within the Zed settings directly by adding the following:

```json
"env": {
  "DOTNET_ROOT": "/usr/local/share/dotnet"
}
```

thanks to this fix I've now become a 10x developer (lol)

hope this helps someone, looks like [that's the theme I'm going for lately](/blog/finding-deleted-content-using-git-logs/).