Helix recipe

Use Mago as the formatter for PHP files in the Helix editor.

Prerequisites

• Mago is installed. See the installation guide if you have not done that yet.
• The mago executable is on your PATH. The recommended installers handle this; you can verify with which mago.

Configuration

Add a few lines to your Helix languages.toml:

• On Linux and macOS the file is usually at ~/.config/helix/languages.toml.
• On Windows it is usually at %AppData%\helix\languages.toml.

Create the file if it does not exist, then append:

[[language]]
name = "php"

formatter = { command = "mago", args = ["format", "--stdin-input"] }
auto-format = true

This overrides Helix's default formatter for PHP and enables formatting on save.

Usage

With auto-format = true, Mago runs every time you save (:write or :w). You can also trigger formatting manually with :format (or :fmt) in command mode.

To verify the setup, open a .php file, misalign some code, and save. The code should snap into place.