Tabular Data Preview: v1 shipped 🫶🏻, let's talk what's next

[HalavicH]

Hey everyone! 👋

Update on the Tabular Data Preview feature I demoed in Discord back in December — yesterday (19.08.2026) #62773 lifted the feature flag, so it's now on by default for everyone in v1.17.x 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉.

If you missed the original thread: it's a live table view for delimiter-separated files (CSV, TSV, PSV, SSV), same slot as Markdown preview.

Flag lift = v1, not done. I want this thread to be the ongoing home for this feature: current status, what's coming next, and a place to drop feedback/ideas as you use it. I'll keep it updated as things land rather than opening a new thread each time — feel free to bookmark/subscribe.

What it does today

• Live preview, updates as you edit the source file
• Row sorting by column
• Row filtering by column value, with search within column
• Column pinning (first column stays visible on horizontal scroll)
• Independently resizable columns
• Right-click a cell to copy its content
• Multiline cell support with source line-number tracking (so line numbers stay correct even with quoted multiline CSV rows)
• Support for CSV / TSV / PSV / SSV, auto-detected by extension

Thx @unshDee for adding JSONL support in #64471

👉🏻👉🏻👉🏻 Demo clips (click to expand)👈🏻👈🏻👈🏻

column.resizing.mp4

stacked.filtering.mp4

column-sorting.mp4

cell.copying.mp4

multiline.render.mode.+.row.identifier.modes.mp4

Why

I needed a real table viewer in Zed and realized it couldn't be done via the extension API — no way to build custom UI from an extension today. This also required upgrading Zed's internal data_table UI component to support a runtime-defined number of columns, independent column resizing, and variable row heights, which didn't exist before.

Longer term, this is a stepping stone toward something bigger: a generic tabular data viewer that could eventually back a database client in Zed — think query results the way IntelliJ's DB tool window shows them. No promises on timeline, but that's the direction.

How we got here

This shipped as a stack of small, reviewable PRs over several months:

• #48207 — initial CSV preview with live table view
• #53496 — settings panel
• #56619 — column pinning
• #57245 — scrollbar/pinned column fix
• #60339 — row filtering
• #60768 — evolve into tabular data preview (TSV/PSV/SSV support, delimiter auto-detection, right-click-to-copy cell content)
• #60995 — refine table styling and header button visibility
• #61127 — single-line row display mode
• #61138 — refine filter popover UI
• #61769 — copy cell/column header content buttons
• #61796 — make filter unavailability order-independent
• #62768 and #62807 — renamed the crate (and everything in it) from csv_preview to tabular_data_preview, matching the TSV/PSV/SSV support it'd already grown
• #62773 — flag lifted, by of @Anthony-Eid 🎉

Plus the underlying data_table component work: #46190, #46341, #51059, #51060, #53295.

Special thanks to @Anthony-Eid for believing in idea & reviewing most of the stack over many months alongside everything else on his plate — appreciate the time. 🙏

Roadmap — what's coming next

v1 covers viewing, sorting, and filtering. The next chunk of work is about making it feel like a real spreadsheet/data tool, not just a read-only preview:

• Cell selection — click/drag to select a range, like a spreadsheet
• Keyboard navigation & selection — arrow keys to move, shift+arrows / shift+click to extend a selection, without touching the mouse
• Copy-as XYZ — copy selection as CSV/TSV/Markdown table, not just single-cell raw text (right-click copy works today)
• Inline cell editing — edit a cell in place and have it write back to the source file
• Search within preview — search for text within the preview table cells
• Automatic column width — adjust column width based on content
• Smaller items: persisting preview settings to settings.json & session saving

None of this is committed to a timeline — priority depends on maintainer bandwidth and what people actually want, which is exactly why I want this to be a live thread rather than something I plan silently. If one of these matters more to you than the others, or you want something not listed here, say so below — it'll shape what I work on next.

Try it on a .csv/.tsv/.psv/.ssv file and let me know what feels off, what's missing, or what you'd want prioritized. I'll post updates here as things land 🫶🏻.

Related discussions

• #61502 — the thread where @Anthony-Eid first said the feature was "polished enough" to drop the flag, back in July. This post is the follow-up.
• #24000 (229 👍) and #50628 (114 👍, someone's already built a standalone DB panel) — the database-client ask this is a stepping stone toward
• #38053 — same DB-client ask, JetBrains-flavored
• #59598 — the "let extensions register read-only file previews" API gap this feature ran into and had to work around by building in-tree

[anchern]

Dankeschön ✨

[defvova]

Thank you for such great work!

[salli-v]

Great work, thanks for improving the tool!

[dataders]

hey friends -- I'm rather new to Zed, but "dangerous" with VS Code and .vsix's.

I was trying to get the dbt Core 2.0's LSP integrated with Zed as a means of "porting" our existing VS Code extension.

The most loved VS Code extension feature is a Code Lens that lets your preview a SQL model or CTE.

Might anyone point me to how this might be achieved, now or in the future?

Today the LSP Command returns a JSON string that the VSCE renders as a tabular preview. But it seems Zed's Extension API doesn't expose anything like that?

Perhaps #50628 or #24000 is more what I'm looking for?

[HalavicH]

Hi. I didn't use VS code code lens, and a bit struggling to grasp the exact use of tabular data preview you propose from screenshots/demos of codelens i've seen online. Though i'm experimenting of using this tabular data preview as a base for full db client (starting with sqlite) see #50628 (reply in thread)

[dataders]

sorry @HalavicH here's a screenshot of our VSCode extension for dbt. In it, the dbt LSP surfaces a "Preview CTE" Code Lens that when clicked, pops open a pane with the results of that SQL query.

my question is

how would I go about supporting similar functionality in Zed?

I've already integrated the LSP, but I'm not sure how to get the Tabular Data Preview to open and display the table's data returned by the LSP. Any information would be much appreciated!

[GeorgyDesign]

Hey, thanks a lot for this feature — really useful!

That being said, I cannot access it and I am on the latest version. I checked multiple different CSV files from different projects and none of them have this feature.

I tried manually launching it via command panel, but to no avail.

[HalavicH]

Hi. I'm surprised I missed your comment. Is it still an issue for you? or it works now? Did you try it in workspace or outside of it?

[unshDee]

Would JSONL/NDJSON support be a possible addition to this preview? Showing each record as a row would make it easier to compare fields across records. A read-only view with top-level keys as columns and nested values shown as compact JSON seems like a useful starting point.

Is anyone already working on this? I'd be interested in contributing if it fits the plans for the existing preview.

[unshDee]

Okay got it! I'll check it out

[unshDee]

I've created a pull request 😄

also while testing, I found a preview crash when pasting and then deleting multiline content. After rows were removed, the renderer could briefly use an old row mapping that referenced deleted rows. So I also added a small fix taht clears the mapping and virtual list together before rebuilding them, and uses the visible row count when rendering. A

[HalavicH]

Good job 🙌! I'll check it out later today :)

[HalavicH]

@unshDee, thx for contribution 🙌. your PR has been just merged

[unshDee]

thank you as well! @HalavicH 🥳

[jenglong1899]

thank you!

[GeorgyDesign]

Thanks, this works! Hopefully there'll be an Edit feature too, (kinda) Google Sheets alternative!