diff --git a/CMakeLists.txt b/CMakeLists.txt
index 80ad5f44fd4..dc4b66829ae 100644
--- a/CMakeLists.txt
+++ b/CMakeLists.txt
@@ -53,6 +53,7 @@ find_package(Qt5 COMPONENTS Designer DesignerComponents Help SerialPort Svg Tool
 
 find_package(Threads)
 find_package(Clang QUIET)
+find_package(KF5SyntaxHighlighting QUIET)
 
 function (set_if_target var target)
    if (TARGET "${target}")
diff --git a/src/libs/3rdparty/syntax-highlighting/CMakeLists.txt b/src/libs/3rdparty/syntax-highlighting/CMakeLists.txt
index 8c37bf1731a..062ae058c31 100644
--- a/src/libs/3rdparty/syntax-highlighting/CMakeLists.txt
+++ b/src/libs/3rdparty/syntax-highlighting/CMakeLists.txt
@@ -1,4 +1,11 @@
+if(TARGET KF5::SyntaxHighlighting)
+  set(HIGHLIGHTING_BUILD_DEFAULT OFF)
+else()
+  set(HIGHLIGHTING_BUILD_DEFAULT ON)
+endif()
+
 add_qtc_library(KSyntaxHighlighting SHARED
+  BUILD_DEFAULT ${HIGHLIGHTING_BUILD_DEFAULT}
   INCLUDES autogenerated/
   PUBLIC_INCLUDES
     src/lib
diff --git a/src/plugins/texteditor/CMakeLists.txt b/src/plugins/texteditor/CMakeLists.txt
index ab8d806f080..93d773ddb5e 100644
--- a/src/plugins/texteditor/CMakeLists.txt
+++ b/src/plugins/texteditor/CMakeLists.txt
@@ -1,6 +1,12 @@
+if(TARGET KSyntaxHighlighting)
+  set(KSYNTAXHIGHLIGHTING_TARGET KSyntaxHighlighting)
+else()
+  set(KSYNTAXHIGHLIGHTING_TARGET KF5::SyntaxHighlighting)
+endif()
+
 add_qtc_plugin(TextEditor
   DEPENDS Qt5::Concurrent Qt5::Network Qt5::PrintSupport Qt5::Xml
-  PUBLIC_DEPENDS KSyntaxHighlighting
+  PUBLIC_DEPENDS ${KSYNTAXHIGHLIGHTING_TARGET}
   PLUGIN_DEPENDS Core
   SOURCES
     autocompleter.cpp autocompleter.h