Frequently Asked Questions

The editor doesn't appear / I see a plain textarea

The Ace JavaScript library is most likely missing. Ace Editor does not bundle the library; download it and place it under /libraries. See Installation and Setup. Check Reports → Status report — the module reports whether the library was found.

Where exactly do I put the library?

Anywhere the module scans:

/libraries/ace
/libraries/ace-builds
the module's own libraries/ directory

The module recursively looks for ace.js and uses the first match, so web/libraries/ace/src-min-noconflict/ace.js works out of the box. See Library Detection.

Which version of the library do I need?

Any recent ace-builds release (the src-min-noconflict build). The CI suite is pinned to a known-good tag, but newer releases work as well.

My `<ace>` snippet shows as plain text on the page

Three things must be true:

The Ace Filter is enabled on the text format used by that field.
The filter runs before "Limit allowed HTML tags" and "Convert line breaks", otherwise the <ace> tag is stripped or its newlines mangled. Give the Ace Filter a low (negative) weight on the format's filter order.
The Ace library is installed.

See Embedding Snippets (Filter).

Can a single snippet use a different theme or syntax?

Yes. Add attributes to the tag, e.g. <ace theme="twilight" syntax="javascript" print-margin="1">…</ace>. These override the filter defaults for that snippet only.

Does the editor keep my content if JavaScript is disabled?

Yes. The original <textarea> is only hidden, never removed, and the editor writes back to it on every change, so the form still submits the field value.

Is the rendered code editable on the page?

No. The field formatter and the text filter both render read-only editors — they are for display only. Only the text-editor integration on edit forms is editable.

Does it work with Drupal 10, 11 and 12?

Yes — the module requires Drupal core ^10 || ^11 || ^12.