Ignore whitespace-only changes in diff view

[Michael-1]

When reviewing changes in Zed’s built-in diff view, whitespace-only modifications currently appear the same as semantic code changes.

This becomes noisy when

• running formatters
• changing indentation
• converting tabs/spaces
• adjusting line wrapping
• applying large automated refactors

It would be useful to have an option to ignore whitespace-only changes in diffs, similar to:

• git diff -w
• VS Code’s whitespace diff controls
• GitHub’s “hide whitespace changes”

Proposed behaviour

Add a toggle in the diff viewer to ignore whitespace changes.

Possible UI

• button in the diff toolbar
• command palette action
• keyboard shortcut
• persistent setting

Example setting

"diff.ignore_whitespace": true

Potential modes

• Ignore leading/trailing whitespace
• Ignore indentation-only changes
• Ignore all whitespace changes

Why this would help

This would make code review significantly cleaner when

• using format-on-save
• rebasing branches with formatting differences
• reviewing generated code
• working in teams with mixed formatting conventions

It would also reduce visual noise and make semantic changes easier to spot.

Additional context

Currently the workaround is using terminal Git commands such as:

git diff -w

but this loses the convenience of Zed’s integrated diff UI.

[tothandor]

This would be great!

[jestersoftware]

absolute deal breaker lol imagine