Vim Cheat Sheet

This page is designed to help you get vim to help you. vim has a long history and a massive number of commands, keyboard shortcuts, and more. This guide brings to you the most commonly used and most useful commands for navigating and editing source code in vim.

Basic Commands

i ⇒ Enter 'input mode', allows you to edit text but you can't run commands

Esc ⇒ Exit 'input mode'/'selection mode' (see v)

:w ⇒ Save the changes you have on the current file

:q ⇒ Close the current editor window (see the sections below)

:wq or ZZ ⇒ Save the changes you have on the current file and close the editor window

:q! ⇒ Close the current editor window without saving the open file

:! <command> ⇒ Run <command> in your current shell (e.g., !make)

:<number> or <number> ⇒ go to line <number>

u ⇒ Undo the last change

ctr+r ⇒ Redo the last change the last undo

v ⇒ Start highlighting by character ('selection mode')

V ⇒ Start highlighting by line

y ⇒ Copy current selection

yy ⇒ Copy current line

d ⇒ Delete/Cut current selection

dd ⇒ Delete/Cut current line

p ⇒ Paste the last thing that was cut/copied

P ⇒ Paste the last thing that was cut/copied before the cursor

Searching in Files

/<regular expression> ⇒ Search for occurrences of <regular expressions>

n ⇒ Go to the next occurrence of the search term

N ⇒ Go to the previous occurrence of the search team

:noh ⇒ Stop highlighting ocurrences of the current search term

Editing Multiple Files

:e <filename> ⇒ Open <filename> in the current window

:sp <filename> ⇒ Split the current window in two, horizontally, and open <filename> in the new window

:vsp <filename> ⇒ Split the current window in two, vertically, and open <filename> in the new window

Moving Between Windows

ctr+w ctr+w ⇒ Move clockwise to the next window

ctr+w → or ctr+w l ⇒ Move to the window to the right of the current one

ctr+w ↑ or ctr+w k ⇒ Move to the window above the current one

ctr+w ← or ctr+w h ⇒ Move to the window to the left of the current one

ctr+w ↓ or ctr+w j ⇒ Move to the window below the current one

Rearrranging Windows

ctr+w x ⇒ Exchange the current window with the next one in the current row/column

ctr+w L ⇒ Move the current window to occupy the right side of the screen

ctr+w K ⇒ Move the current window to occuppy the top of the screen

ctr+w H ⇒ Move the current window to occupy the left side of the screen

ctr+w J ⇒ Move the current window to occupy the bottom of the screen

Resizing Windows

ctr+w = ⇒ Have all windows take up an equal space of their row/column

<number> ctr+w + ⇒ Increase window height by <number>

<number> ctr+w — ⇒ Decrease window height by <number>

<number> ctr+w > ⇒ Increase window width by <number>

<number> ctr+w < ⇒ Decrease window width by <number>