Vim Essential Commands and Tricks

Master these lesser-known, yet powerful, Vim commands to dramatically speed up your text editing workflow.

1. Quick Exits

Save precious seconds when closing files.

Action	Command	Description
Save and Quit	`ZZ`	Two capital Zs. A quick way to write changes and exit.
Quit without saving	`ZQ`	Capital Z, then Q. Quits without saving, similar to `:q!`.

Use the “inner block” motion (i) combined with block type to quickly target content within delimiters.

Action	Command	Description
Select inside parentheses `()`	`vib`	visual inner block (or ‘b’ for balanced symbols).
Select inside curly braces `{}`	`viB`	visual inner BRACE (capital B).
Change inside quotes `""`	`ci"`	change inner quote. Works with `''` and \` too.
Change inside parentheses `()`	`cib`	Quickly deletes and puts you in insert mode.

Perform operations on blocks of text across multiple lines.

Action	Command	Description
Enter Block Mode	`Ctrl+v`	Use this before selecting lines.
Insert at Start of Block	`I`	While in Visual Block mode, press capital I to insert text that appears on every selected line after pressing `Esc`.
Append at End of Block	`A`	After selecting the block (and pressing `$`), press capital A to append text to the end of every selected line after pressing `Esc`.
Re-select Last Block	`gv`	Jumps you back into Visual Block mode with the last block selected.

Fluidly move around and clean up your code.

Action	Command	Description
Re-indent the whole file	`gg=G`	Go to top (`gg`), apply auto-indent (`=`), go to bottom (`G`).
Jump between matching pairs	`%`	Place the cursor on a `(`, `{`, `[`, or similar symbol and jump to its match.
Jump to specific line number	`42G`	Type the line number, then capital G.
Join lines with a space	`J`	Capital J joins the current line and the next with one space between them.
Join lines without a space	`gJ`	gJ joins the lines without adding a space.

Action	Command	Description
Toggle character case	`~`	In Normal mode, toggle the case of the character under the cursor.
Toggle word case	`g~w`	Toggle case for the current word.
Toggle case in a tag	`g~it`	Toggle case for text inner tag.

Quickly interact with your environment.

Action	Command	Description
Suspend Vim to terminal	`Ctrl+z`	Temporarily pauses Vim and returns you to the shell.
Return Vim to foreground	`fg`	Type `fg` in the terminal to resume your session.
Open URL under cursor	`gx`	Opens the web link under the cursor in your default browser.
Open file path under cursor	`gf`	Opens the file path under the cursor (if it exists in the Vim path).

Marks allow you to quickly jump between locations.

Action	Command	Description
Set Mark (Current File)	`m` followed by a lowercase letter (e.g., `ma`).	Mark is only valid within the current file.
Jump to Mark (Current File)	`'` followed by the lowercase letter (e.g., `'a`).	Jumps to the marked line and column.
Set Mark (Across Files)	`m` followed by an uppercase letter (e.g., `mA`).	Mark is valid across files and persists until Vim closes.
Jump to Mark (Across Files)	`'` followed by the uppercase letter (e.g., `'A`).	Jumps to the correct file and line.