A lightweight text editor for Windows, built from scratch with WPF and .NET 10. Volt renders text directly via GlyphRun drawing rather than using built-in WPF text controls, giving full control over rendering, scrolling, and input handling.
- Custom rendering engine -- three-layer DrawingVisual architecture (text, gutter, caret) with GlyphRun-based rendering for sharp ClearType text and smooth scrolling
- Syntax highlighting -- regex-based tokenizer with multi-line string state tracking, interpolation/escape highlighting, and background precomputation for large files. Ships with Perl; add languages by dropping a grammar JSON file into
%AppData%/Volt/Grammars/ - JSON theming -- one file controls editor, chrome, and syntax colours. Ships with Default Dark, Default Light, and Gruvbox Dark. Add themes by dropping a JSON file into
%AppData%/Volt/Themes/ - Command palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) -- VS Code-style palette with live preview for theme, font, and editor settings
- Find and replace (Ctrl+F) -- match highlighting, case sensitivity toggle, match count, keyboard navigation
- Smart editing -- auto-close brackets/quotes, smart indent after
{/(/[, tab-stop-aware backspace, double-click word selection - Code folding -- collapse and expand blocks at the gutter or via keyboard shortcuts
- Word wrap -- toggleable with word-boundary and indent-preserving modes
- File explorer -- side panel with folder/workspace browsing, drag-and-drop file moving, rename, delete with undo support
- Workspaces -- multi-root folder workspaces with session persistence (open tabs, caret positions, scroll state)
- Dockable panels -- four-region panel system (left, right, top, bottom) with tab strips, resize, and layout persistence
- Open Recent -- tracks recently opened files, folders, and workspaces with a searchable command palette view
- Region-based undo/redo -- captures only affected lines, scales to large files
- Customizable keybinds -- all keyboard shortcuts configurable via Settings
- Auto-updates -- checks for updates on startup via GitHub Releases (Velopack)
- Settings window -- configurable font family/size/weight, line height, tab size, caret style (bar/block) and blink rate, colour theme
- Custom window chrome -- dark mode title bar with DWM integration, themed scrollbars, no white flash on resize
- Windows 10/11
- .NET 10 SDK
dotnet build Volt.sln
dotnet run --project Volt/Volt.csprojDownload the latest installer from GitHub Releases. The app auto-updates when new versions are published.
Maintainers: see docs/RELEASE.md for the Velopack build and publish workflow.