Neovim

Neovim is a fork of Vim aiming to improve user experience, plugins, and GUIs.

Installation

Note: With neovim, some of its features are delegated to external "providers". For Python providers, use python-pynvim. For clipboard providers, see provider-clipboard or the :help provider-clipboard neovim command.

It is also possible to install one of many GUIs and other related projects (most of them are in official repositories or in AUR).

Configuration

Nvim's user-specific configuration file is located at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/nvim/init.vim, by default ~/.config/nvim/init.vim. The global configuration file is loaded from $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS/nvim/sysinit.vim (by default /etc/xdg/nvim/sysinit.vim) if it exists, or if it does not, from /usr/share/nvim/sysinit.vim which should not be user-edited. [1] By default, the former global configuration file does not exist. If you create the former file, you may wish to have it source the latter if you still want the functionality it provides, which is allowing pacman-installed vim packages to work with Nvim.

Nvim is compatible with most of Vim's options, however there are options specific to Nvim. For a complete list of Nvim options, see Neovim's help file.

Nvim's data directory is located in ~/.local/share/nvim/ and contains swap for open files, the ShaDa (Shared Data) file, and the site directory for plugins.

Migrating from Vim

If you wish to migrate your existing Vim configuration to Nvim, simply copy your ~/.vimrc to ~/.config/nvim/init.vim. If applicable, copy the contents of ~/.vim/autoload/ to ~/.local/share/nvim/site/autoload/.

Shared Configuration between Vim and Nvim

Neovim uses $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/nvim instead of ~/.vim as its main configuration directory and $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/nvim/init.vim instead of ~/.vimrc as its main configuration file.

If you wish to continue using Vim and wish to source your existing Vim configuration in Nvim, see nvim-from-vim or the :help nvim-from-vim neovim command.

Loading vim addons

This article or section is out of date.

Reason: /usr/share/vim/vimfiles/ is added to runtimepath by /usr/share/nvim/archlinux.vim which is sourced by /etc/xdg/nvim/sysinit.vim.[2][3] (Discuss in Talk:Neovim#)

If you would like to use plugins, syntax definitions, or other addons that are installed for vim, you can add the default vim runtime path to neovim by adding it to the rtp. For example, you could run the following within nvim or add it to your neovim config:

set rtp^=/usr/share/vim/vimfiles/

Tips and tricks

Replacing vi and vim with neovim

Setting $VISUAL and $EDITOR environment variables should be sufficient in most cases.

Some applications may hardcode vi or vim as default editor, to use neovim in their place, install neovim-symlinks^AUR or neovim-drop-in^AUR.

Symlinking init.vim to .vimrc

As neovim is mostly compatible with standard vim, you can symlink nvim/init.vim to your old .vimrc to keep old configuration options:

$ ln -s ~/.vimrc ~/.config/nvim/init.vim

If you want some lines to be specific to each version, you can use an if block in your .vimrc file:

if has('nvim')
    " Neovim specific commands
else
    " Standard vim specific commands
endif

Adding true color support to neovim

The READMEs of this project explain how to add 24-bits "True Color" support to your syntax highlighting and how to use a color picker to see how it looks in real-time. Comes with the syntax highlighting of the author (if installed) for C++.

Troubleshooting

Cursor is not restored to previous state after exit

If after exiting neovim cursor is still blinking see solution on neovim FAQ.