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gpui: Fix truncation flickering#45373

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danilo-leal merged 1 commit intomainfrom
truncate-flicker
Dec 19, 2025
Merged

gpui: Fix truncation flickering#45373
danilo-leal merged 1 commit intomainfrom
truncate-flicker

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It's been a little that we've noticed some flickering and other weird resizing behavior with text truncation in Zed:

Screenshot.2025-12-19.at.10.34.mp4
Screenshot.2025-12-19.at.10.38.mp4

Initially, we suspected this could be due to how we calculate the length of a line to insert truncation, which is based first on the length of each individual character, and then second goes through a pass calculating the line length as a whole. This could cause mismatch and culminate in our bug.

However, even though that felt like a reasonable suspicion, I realized something rather simple at some point: the truncate and truncate_start methods in the Label didn't use whitespace_nowrap. If you take Tailwind as an example, their truncate utility class takes overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;. This pointed out to a potential bug with whitespace_nowrap where that was blocking truncation entirely, even though that's technically part of what's necessary to truncate as you don't want text that will be truncated to wrap.

Ultimately, what was happening was that the text element was caching its layout based on its wrap_width but not considering its truncate_width. The truncate width is essentially the new definitive width of the text based on the available space, which was never being computed. So the fix here was to add truncate_width.is_none() to the cache validation check, so that it only uses the cached text element size if the truncation width is untouched. But if that changes, we need to account for the new width. Then, in the Label component, we added min_w_0 to allow the label div to shrink below its original size, and finally, we added whitespace_nowrap() as the cache check fundamentally fixed that method's problem.

In a future PR, we can basically remove the single_line() label method because: 1) whenever you want a single label, you most likely want it to truncate, and 2) most instances of truncate are already followed by single_line in Zed today, so we can cut that part.

Result is no flickering with truncated labels!

Screenshot.2025-12-19.at.12.52.mp4

Release Notes:

  • Fixed a bug in GPUI where truncated text would flicker as you resized the container in which the text was in.

Co-authored-by: Lukas Wirth <me@lukaswirth.dev>
@cla-bot cla-bot bot added the cla-signed The user has signed the Contributor License Agreement label Dec 19, 2025
@danilo-leal danilo-leal merged commit 32600f2 into main Dec 19, 2025
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@danilo-leal danilo-leal deleted the truncate-flicker branch December 19, 2025 16:14
rtfeldman pushed a commit that referenced this pull request Jan 5, 2026
It's been a little that we've noticed some flickering and other weird
resizing behavior with text truncation in Zed:


https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/4d5691a3-cd3d-45e0-8b96-74a4e0e273d2


https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/d1d0e587-7676-4da0-8818-f4e50f0e294e

Initially, we suspected this could be due to how we calculate the length
of a line to insert truncation, which is based first on the length of
each individual character, and then second goes through a pass
calculating the line length as a whole. This could cause mismatch and
culminate in our bug.

However, even though that felt like a reasonable suspicion, I realized
something rather simple at some point: the `truncate` and
`truncate_start` methods in the `Label` didn't use `whitespace_nowrap`.
If you take Tailwind as an example, their `truncate` utility class takes
`overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;`. This
pointed out to a potential bug with `whitespace_nowrap` where that was
blocking truncation entirely, even though that's technically part of
what's necessary to truncate as you don't want text that will be
truncated to wrap.

Ultimately, what was happening was that the text element was caching its
layout based on its `wrap_width` but not considering its
`truncate_width`. The truncate width is essentially the new definitive
width of the text based on the available space, which was never being
computed. So the fix here was to add `truncate_width.is_none()` to the
cache validation check, so that it only uses the cached text element
size _if the truncation width is untouched_. But if that changes, we
need to account for the new width. Then, in the Label component, we
added `min_w_0` to allow the label div to shrink below its original
size, and finally, we added `whitespace_nowrap()` as the cache check
fundamentally fixed that method's problem.

In a future PR, we can basically remove the `single_line()` label method
because: 1) whenever you want a single label, you most likely want it to
truncate, and 2) most instances of `truncate` are already followed by
`single_line` in Zed today, so we can cut that part.

Result is no flickering with truncated labels!


https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/ae17cbde-0de7-42ca-98a4-22fcb452016b

Release Notes:

- Fixed a bug in GPUI where truncated text would flicker as you resized
the container in which the text was in.

Co-authored-by: Lukas Wirth <me@lukaswirth.dev>
LivioGama pushed a commit to LivioGama/zed that referenced this pull request Jan 20, 2026
It's been a little that we've noticed some flickering and other weird
resizing behavior with text truncation in Zed:


https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/4d5691a3-cd3d-45e0-8b96-74a4e0e273d2


https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/d1d0e587-7676-4da0-8818-f4e50f0e294e

Initially, we suspected this could be due to how we calculate the length
of a line to insert truncation, which is based first on the length of
each individual character, and then second goes through a pass
calculating the line length as a whole. This could cause mismatch and
culminate in our bug.

However, even though that felt like a reasonable suspicion, I realized
something rather simple at some point: the `truncate` and
`truncate_start` methods in the `Label` didn't use `whitespace_nowrap`.
If you take Tailwind as an example, their `truncate` utility class takes
`overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;`. This
pointed out to a potential bug with `whitespace_nowrap` where that was
blocking truncation entirely, even though that's technically part of
what's necessary to truncate as you don't want text that will be
truncated to wrap.

Ultimately, what was happening was that the text element was caching its
layout based on its `wrap_width` but not considering its
`truncate_width`. The truncate width is essentially the new definitive
width of the text based on the available space, which was never being
computed. So the fix here was to add `truncate_width.is_none()` to the
cache validation check, so that it only uses the cached text element
size _if the truncation width is untouched_. But if that changes, we
need to account for the new width. Then, in the Label component, we
added `min_w_0` to allow the label div to shrink below its original
size, and finally, we added `whitespace_nowrap()` as the cache check
fundamentally fixed that method's problem.

In a future PR, we can basically remove the `single_line()` label method
because: 1) whenever you want a single label, you most likely want it to
truncate, and 2) most instances of `truncate` are already followed by
`single_line` in Zed today, so we can cut that part.

Result is no flickering with truncated labels!


https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/ae17cbde-0de7-42ca-98a4-22fcb452016b

Release Notes:

- Fixed a bug in GPUI where truncated text would flicker as you resized
the container in which the text was in.

Co-authored-by: Lukas Wirth <me@lukaswirth.dev>
LivioGama pushed a commit to LivioGama/zed that referenced this pull request Jan 20, 2026
It's been a little that we've noticed some flickering and other weird
resizing behavior with text truncation in Zed:


https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/4d5691a3-cd3d-45e0-8b96-74a4e0e273d2


https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/d1d0e587-7676-4da0-8818-f4e50f0e294e

Initially, we suspected this could be due to how we calculate the length
of a line to insert truncation, which is based first on the length of
each individual character, and then second goes through a pass
calculating the line length as a whole. This could cause mismatch and
culminate in our bug.

However, even though that felt like a reasonable suspicion, I realized
something rather simple at some point: the `truncate` and
`truncate_start` methods in the `Label` didn't use `whitespace_nowrap`.
If you take Tailwind as an example, their `truncate` utility class takes
`overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;`. This
pointed out to a potential bug with `whitespace_nowrap` where that was
blocking truncation entirely, even though that's technically part of
what's necessary to truncate as you don't want text that will be
truncated to wrap.

Ultimately, what was happening was that the text element was caching its
layout based on its `wrap_width` but not considering its
`truncate_width`. The truncate width is essentially the new definitive
width of the text based on the available space, which was never being
computed. So the fix here was to add `truncate_width.is_none()` to the
cache validation check, so that it only uses the cached text element
size _if the truncation width is untouched_. But if that changes, we
need to account for the new width. Then, in the Label component, we
added `min_w_0` to allow the label div to shrink below its original
size, and finally, we added `whitespace_nowrap()` as the cache check
fundamentally fixed that method's problem.

In a future PR, we can basically remove the `single_line()` label method
because: 1) whenever you want a single label, you most likely want it to
truncate, and 2) most instances of `truncate` are already followed by
`single_line` in Zed today, so we can cut that part.

Result is no flickering with truncated labels!


https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/ae17cbde-0de7-42ca-98a4-22fcb452016b

Release Notes:

- Fixed a bug in GPUI where truncated text would flicker as you resized
the container in which the text was in.

Co-authored-by: Lukas Wirth <me@lukaswirth.dev>
LivioGama pushed a commit to LivioGama/zed that referenced this pull request Feb 15, 2026
It's been a little that we've noticed some flickering and other weird
resizing behavior with text truncation in Zed:


https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/4d5691a3-cd3d-45e0-8b96-74a4e0e273d2


https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/d1d0e587-7676-4da0-8818-f4e50f0e294e

Initially, we suspected this could be due to how we calculate the length
of a line to insert truncation, which is based first on the length of
each individual character, and then second goes through a pass
calculating the line length as a whole. This could cause mismatch and
culminate in our bug.

However, even though that felt like a reasonable suspicion, I realized
something rather simple at some point: the `truncate` and
`truncate_start` methods in the `Label` didn't use `whitespace_nowrap`.
If you take Tailwind as an example, their `truncate` utility class takes
`overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;`. This
pointed out to a potential bug with `whitespace_nowrap` where that was
blocking truncation entirely, even though that's technically part of
what's necessary to truncate as you don't want text that will be
truncated to wrap.

Ultimately, what was happening was that the text element was caching its
layout based on its `wrap_width` but not considering its
`truncate_width`. The truncate width is essentially the new definitive
width of the text based on the available space, which was never being
computed. So the fix here was to add `truncate_width.is_none()` to the
cache validation check, so that it only uses the cached text element
size _if the truncation width is untouched_. But if that changes, we
need to account for the new width. Then, in the Label component, we
added `min_w_0` to allow the label div to shrink below its original
size, and finally, we added `whitespace_nowrap()` as the cache check
fundamentally fixed that method's problem.

In a future PR, we can basically remove the `single_line()` label method
because: 1) whenever you want a single label, you most likely want it to
truncate, and 2) most instances of `truncate` are already followed by
`single_line` in Zed today, so we can cut that part.

Result is no flickering with truncated labels!


https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/ae17cbde-0de7-42ca-98a4-22fcb452016b

Release Notes:

- Fixed a bug in GPUI where truncated text would flicker as you resized
the container in which the text was in.

Co-authored-by: Lukas Wirth <me@lukaswirth.dev>
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