Nvim

Nvim neovim nvim-intro

Nvim is based on Vim by Bram Moolenaar. Nvim is emphatically a fork of Vim, not a clone: compatibility with Vim (especially editor and Vimscript features, except Vim9script) is maintained where possible. See vim-differences for the complete reference.

If you already use Vim, see nvim-from-vim for a quickstart. If you just installed Nvim and have never used it before, watch this 10-minute video: https://youtu.be/TQn2hJeHQbM .

To learn how to use Vim in 30 minutes, try the tutorial:

:Tutor<Enter>

Transitioning from Vim nvim-from-vim

1. To start the transition, create your init.vim (user config) file:

:exe 'edit '.stdpath('config').'/init.vim'
:write ++p

2. Add these contents to the file:

set runtimepath^=~/.vim runtimepath+=~/.vim/after
let &packpath = &runtimepath
source ~/.vimrc

3. Restart Nvim, your existing Vim config will be loaded.

See provider-python and provider-clipboard for additional software you might need to use some features.

Your Vim configuration might not be entirely Nvim-compatible (see vim-differences). For example the 'ttymouse' option was removed from Nvim, because mouse support is always enabled if possible. If you use the same vimrc for Vim and Nvim you could guard 'ttymouse' in your configuration like so:

if !has('nvim')
    set ttymouse=xterm2
endif

And for Nvim-specific configuration, you can do this:

if has('nvim')
    tnoremap <Esc> <C-\><C-n>
endif

For a more granular approach use exists():

if exists(':tnoremap')
    tnoremap <Esc> <C-\><C-n>
endif

Now you should be able to explore Nvim more comfortably. Check nvim-features for more information.

portable-config
Because Nvim follows the XDG base-directories standard, configuration on Windows is stored in ~/AppData instead of ~/.config. But you can still share the same Nvim configuration on all of your machines, by creating ~/AppData/Local/nvim/init.vim containing just this line:

source ~/.config/nvim/init.vim

What next? nvim-quickstart

If you are just trying out Nvim for a few minutes, and want to see the extremes of what it can do, try one of these popular "extension packs" or "distributions" (Note: Nvim is not affiliated with these projects, and does not support them):

However, in general, we recommend (eventually) taking time to learn Nvim from its stock configuration, and incrementally setting options and adding plugins to your config as you find an explicit need to do so.