term.txt Nvim NVIM REFERENCE MANUAL
Terminal UI tui
Nvim (except in --headless mode) uses information about the terminal you are using to present a built-in UI. If that information is not correct, the screen may be messed up or keys may not be recognized. Type gO to see the table of contents.
Startup startup-terminal Nvim (except in --headless mode) guesses a terminal type when it starts. $TERM is the primary hint that determines the terminal type.
terminfo E557 E558 E559 The terminfo database is used if available. The Unibilium library (used by Nvim to read terminfo) allows you to override the system terminfo with one in $HOME/.terminfo/ directory, in part or in whole. Building your own terminfo is usually as simple as running this as a non-superuser:
curl -LO http://invisible-island.net/datafiles/current/terminfo.src.gzgunzip terminfo.src.gztic terminfo.src
$TERM The $TERM environment variable must match the terminal you are using! Otherwise Nvim cannot know what sequences your terminal expects, and weird or sub-optimal behavior will result (scrolling quirks, wrong colors, etc.). $TERM is also important because it is mirrored by SSH to the remote session, unlike most other environment variables. For this terminal Set $TERM to builtin-terms -------------------------------------------------------------------------iTerm (original) iterm, iTerm.app N iTerm2 (new capabilities) iterm2, iTerm2.app Y Konsole konsole-256color N anything libvte-based vte, vte-256color Y (e.g. GNOME Terminal) (aliases: gnome, gnome-256color) tmux tmux, tmux-256color Y screen screen, screen-256color Y PuTTY putty, putty-256color Y Terminal.app nsterm N Linux virtual terminal linux, linux-256color Y
builtin-terms builtin_terms If a terminfo database is not available, or no entry for the terminal type is found in that database, Nvim will use a compiled-in mini-database of terminfo entries for "xterm", "putty", "screen", "tmux", "rxvt", "iterm", "interix", "linux", "st", "vte", "gnome", and "ansi". The lookup matches the initial portion of the terminal type, so (for example) "putty-256color" and "putty" will both be mapped to the built-in "putty" entry. The built-in terminfo entries describe the terminal as 256-colour capable if possible. See tui-colors. If no built-in terminfo record matches the terminal type, the built-in "ansi" terminfo record is used as a final fallback. The built-in mini-database is not combined with an external terminfo database, nor can it be used in preference to one. You can thus entirely override any omissions or out-of-date information in the built-in terminfo database by supplying an external one with entries for the terminal type.
Settings depending on terminal term-dependent-settings
If you want to set terminal-dependent options or mappings, you can do this in your init.vim. Example:
if $TERM =~ '^\(rxvt\|screen\|interix\|putty\)\(-.*\)\?$'set notermguicolorselseif $TERM =~ '^\(tmux\|iterm\|vte\|gnome\)\(-.*\)\?$'set termguicolorselseif $TERM =~ '^\(xterm\)\(-.*\)\?$'if $XTERM_VERSION != ''set termguicolorselseif $KONSOLE_PROFILE_NAME != ''set termguicolorselseif $VTE_VERSION != ''set termguicolorselseset notermguicolorsendifelseif $TERM =~ ...... and so forth ...endif
scroll-region xterm-scroll-region Where possible, Nvim will use the terminal's ability to set a scroll region in order to redraw faster when a window is scrolled. If the terminal's terminfo description describes an ability to set top and bottom scroll margins, that is used. This will not speed up scrolling in a window that is not the full width of the terminal. Xterm has an extra ability, not described by terminfo, to set left and right scroll margins as well. If Nvim detects that the terminal is Xterm, it will make use of this ability to speed up scrolling that is not the full width of the terminal. This ability is only present in genuine Xterm, not in the many terminal emulators that incorrectly describe themselves as xterm. Nvim's detection of genuine Xterm will not work over an SSH connection, because the environment variable, set by genuine Xterm, that it looks for is not automatically replicated over an SSH login session.
tui-colors Nvim uses 256 colours by default, ignoring terminfo for most terminal types, including "linux" (whose virtual terminals have had 256-colour support since 4.8) and anything claiming to be "xterm". Also when $COLORTERM or $TERM contain the string "256". Nvim similarly assumes that any terminal emulator that sets $COLORTERM to any value, is capable of at least 16-colour operation.
true-color xterm-true-color Nvim emits true (24-bit) colours in the terminal, if 'termguicolors' is set. It uses the "setrgbf" and "setrgbb" terminfo extensions (proposed by Rüdiger Sonderfeld in 2013). If your terminfo definition is missing them, then Nvim will decide whether to add them to your terminfo definition, using the ISO 8613-6:1994/ITU T.416:1993 control sequences for setting RGB colours (but modified to use semicolons instead of colons unless the terminal is known to follow the standard). Another convention, pioneered in 2016 by tmux, is the "Tc" terminfo extension. If terminfo has this flag, Nvim will add constructed "setrgbf" and "setrgbb" capabilities as if they had been in the terminfo definition. If terminfo does not (yet) have this flag, Nvim will fall back to $TERM and other environment variables. It will add constructed "setrgbf" and "setrgbb" capabilities in the case of the the "rxvt", "linux", "st", "tmux", and "iterm" terminal types, or when Konsole, genuine Xterm, a libvte terminal emulator version 0.36 or later, or a terminal emulator that sets the COLORTERM environment variable to "truecolor" is detected.
xterm-resize Nvim can resize the terminal display on some terminals that implement an extension pioneered by dtterm. terminfo does not have a flag for this extension. So Nvim simply assumes that (all) "dtterm", "xterm", "teraterm", "rxvt" terminal types, and Konsole, are capable of this. tui-cursor-shape Nvim will adjust the shape of the cursor from a block to a line when in insert mode (or as specified by the 'guicursor' option), on terminals that support it. It uses the same terminfo extensions that were pioneered by tmux for this: "Ss" and "Se". If your terminfo definition is missing them, then Nvim will decide whether to add them to your terminfo definition, by looking at $TERM and other environment variables. For the "rxvt", "putty", "linux", "screen", "teraterm", and "iterm" terminal types, or when Konsole, a libvte-based terminal emulator, or genuine Xterm are detected, it will add constructed "Ss" and "Se" capabilities. Note: Sometimes it will appear that Nvim when run within tmux is not changing the cursor, but in fact it is tmux receiving instructions from Nvim to change the cursor and not knowing what to do in turn. tmux has to translate what it receives from Nvim into whatever control sequence is appropriate for the terminal that it is outputting to. It shares a common mechanism with Nvim, of using the "Ss" and "Se" capabilities from terminfo (for the output terminal) if they are present. Unlike Nvim, if they are not present in terminfo you must add them by setting "terminal-overrides" in ~/.tmux.conf . See the tmux(1) manual page for the details of how and what to do in the tmux configuration file. It will look something like:
set -ga terminal-overrides '*:Ss=\E[%p1%d q:Se=\E[ q'or (alas!) for Konsole specifically, something more complex like:
set -ga terminal-overrides 'xterm*:\E]50;CursorShape=%?%p1%{3}%<%t%{0}%e%{1}%;%d\007'cs7-problem Note: If the terminal settings are changed after running Vim, you might have an illegal combination of settings. This has been reported on Solaris 2.5 with "stty cs8 parenb", which is restored as "stty cs7 parenb". Use "stty cs8 -parenb -istrip" instead, this is restored correctly. Many cursor key codes start with an <Esc>. Vim must find out if this is a single hit of the <Esc> key or the start of a cursor key sequence. It waits for a next character to arrive. If it does not arrive within one second a single <Esc> is assumed. On very slow systems this may fail, causing cursor keys not to work sometimes. If you discover this problem reset the 'timeout' option. Vim will wait for the next character to arrive after an <Esc>. If you want to enter a single <Esc> you must type it twice. Some terminals have confusing codes for the cursor keys. The televideo 925 is such a terminal. It sends a CTRL-H for cursor-left. This would make it impossible to distinguish a backspace and cursor-left. To avoid this problem CTRL-H is never recognized as cursor-left.
vt100-cursor-keys xterm-cursor-keys Other terminals (e.g., vt100 and xterm) have cursor keys that send <Esc>OA, <Esc>OB, etc. Unfortunately these are valid commands in insert mode: Stop insert, Open a new line above the new one, start inserting 'A', 'B', etc. Instead of performing these commands Vim will erroneously recognize this typed key sequence as a cursor key movement. To avoid this and make Vim do what you want in either case you could use these settings:
set notimeout " don't timeout on mappingsset ttimeout " do timeout on terminal key codesset timeoutlen=100 " timeout after 100 msec
This requires the key-codes to be sent within 100 msec in order to recognize them as a cursor key. When you type you normally are not that fast, so they are recognized as individual typed commands, even though Vim receives the same sequence of bytes.
Window size window-size
[This is about the size of the whole window Vim is using, not a window that is created with the ":split" command.] On Unix systems, three methods are tried to get the window size: - an ioctl call (TIOCGSIZE or TIOCGWINSZ, depends on your system) - the environment variables "LINES" and "COLUMNS" - from the terminfo entries "lines" and "columns" If everything fails a default size of 24 lines and 80 columns is assumed. If a window-resize signal is received the size will be set again. If the window size is wrong you can use the 'lines' and 'columns' options to set the correct values. See :mode.
Slow and fast terminals slow-fast-terminal
slow-terminal
If you have a fast terminal you may like to set the 'ruler' option. The cursor position is shown in the status line. If you are using horizontal scrolling ('wrap' option off) consider setting 'sidescroll' to a small number. If you have a slow terminal you may want to reset the 'showcmd' and 'ruler' options. The command characters and cursor positions will not be shown in the status line (which involves a lot of cursor motions and attribute changes for every keypress or movement). If the terminal scrolls very slowly, set the 'scrolljump' to 5 or so. If the cursor is moved off the screen (e.g., with "j") Vim will scroll 5 lines at a time. Another possibility is to reduce the number of lines that Vim uses with the command "z{height} " .If the characters from the terminal are arriving with more than 1 second between them you might want to set the 'timeout' and/or 'ttimeout' option. See the "Options" chapter options. If you are using a color terminal that is slow when displaying lines beyond the end of a buffer, this is because Nvim is drawing the whitespace twice, in two sets of colours and attributes. To prevent this, use this command:
hi NonText cterm=NONE ctermfg=NONEThis draws the spaces with the default colours and attributes, which allows the second pass of drawing to be optimized away. Note: Although in theory the colours of whitespace are immaterial, in practice they change the colours of cursors and selections that cross them. This may have a visible, but minor, effect on some UIs.
Using the mouse mouse-using
This section is about using the mouse on a terminal or a terminal window. How to use the mouse in a GUI window is explained in gui-mouse. For scrolling with a mouse wheel see scroll-mouse-wheel. These characters in the 'mouse' option tell in which situations the mouse will be used by Vim: n Normal mode v Visual mode i Insert mode c Command-line mode h all previous modes when in a help file a all previous modes r for hit-enter prompt If you only want to use the mouse in a few modes or also want to use it for the two questions you will have to concatenate the letters for those modes. For example:
set mouse=nvWill make the mouse work in Normal mode and Visual mode.
set mouse=hWill make the mouse work in help files only (so you can use "g<LeftMouse>" to jump to tags). Whether the selection that is started with the mouse is in Visual mode or Select mode depends on whether "mouse" is included in the 'selectmode' option. In an xterm, with the currently active mode included in the 'mouse' option, normal mouse clicks are used by Vim, mouse clicks with the shift or ctrl key pressed go to the xterm. With the currently active mode not included in 'mouse' all mouse clicks go to the xterm.
xterm-clipboard The middle mouse button will insert the unnamed register. In that case, here is how you copy and paste a piece of text: Copy/paste with the mouse and Visual mode ('mouse' option must be set, see above): 1. Press left mouse button on first letter of text, move mouse pointer to last letter of the text and release the button. This will start Visual mode and highlight the selected area. 2. Press "y" to yank the Visual text in the unnamed register. 3. Click the left mouse button at the insert position. 4. Click the middle mouse button. Shortcut: If the insert position is on the screen at the same time as the Visual text, you can do 2, 3 and 4 all in one: Click the middle mouse button at the insert position.
xterm-copy-paste NOTE: In some (older) xterms, it's not possible to move the cursor past column 95 or 223. This is an xterm problem, not Vim's. Get a newer xterm color-xterm. Copy/paste in xterm with (current mode NOT included in 'mouse'): 1. Press left mouse button on first letter of text, move mouse pointer to last letter of the text and release the button. 2. Use normal Vim commands to put the cursor at the insert position. 3. Press "a" to start Insert mode. 4. Click the middle mouse button. 5. Press ESC to end Insert mode. (The same can be done with anything in 'mouse' if you keep the shift key pressed while using the mouse.) Note: if you lose the 8th bit when pasting (special characters are translated into other characters), you may have to do "stty cs8 -istrip -parenb" in your shell before starting Vim. Thus in an xterm the shift and ctrl keys cannot be used with the mouse. Mouse commands requiring the CTRL modifier can be simulated by typing the "g" key before using the mouse: "g<LeftMouse>" is "<C-LeftMouse> (jump to tag under mouse click) "g<RightMouse>" is "<C-RightMouse> ("CTRL-T")
bracketed-paste-mode Bracketed paste mode allows terminal applications to distinguish between typed text and pasted text. Thus you can paste text without Nvim trying to format or indent the text. See also https://cirw.in/blog/bracketed-paste Nvim enables bracketed paste by default. If it does not work in your terminal, try the 'paste' option instead.
mouse-mode-table mouse-overview A short overview of what the mouse buttons do, when 'mousemodel' is "extend": Normal Mode: event position selection change action cursor window<LeftMouse> yes end yes <C-LeftMouse> yes end yes "CTRL-]" (2) <S-LeftMouse> yes no change yes "*" (2) <S-LeftMouse> <LeftDrag> yes start or extend (1) no <LeftDrag> <LeftRelease> yes start or extend (1) no <MiddleMouse> yes if not active no put <MiddleMouse> yes if active no yank and put <RightMouse> yes start or extend yes <A-RightMouse> yes start or extend blockw. yes <A-RightMouse> <S-RightMouse> yes no change yes "#" (2) <S-RightMouse> <C-RightMouse> no no change no "CTRL-T" <RightDrag> yes extend no <RightDrag> <RightRelease> yes extend no <RightRelease> Insert or Replace Mode: event position selection change action cursor window<LeftMouse> yes (cannot be active) yes <C-LeftMouse> yes (cannot be active) yes "CTRL-O^]" (2) <S-LeftMouse> yes (cannot be active) yes "CTRL-O*" (2) <LeftDrag> yes start or extend (1) no like CTRL-O (1) <LeftRelease> yes start or extend (1) no like CTRL-O (1) <MiddleMouse> no (cannot be active) no put register <RightMouse> yes start or extend yes like CTRL-O <A-RightMouse> yes start or extend blockw. yes <S-RightMouse> yes (cannot be active) yes "CTRL-O#" (2) <C-RightMouse> no (cannot be active) no "CTRL-O CTRL-T" In a help window: event position selection change action cursor window<2-LeftMouse> yes (cannot be active) no "^]" (jump to help tag) When 'mousemodel' is "popup", these are different: Normal Mode: event position selection change action cursor window<S-LeftMouse> yes start or extend (1) no <A-LeftMouse> yes start or extend blockw. no <A-LeftMouse> <RightMouse> no popup menu no Insert or Replace Mode: event position selection change action cursor window<S-LeftMouse> yes start or extend (1) no like CTRL-O (1) <A-LeftMouse> yes start or extend blockw. no <RightMouse> no popup menu no (1) only if mouse pointer moved since press (2) only if click is in same buffer Clicking the left mouse button causes the cursor to be positioned. If the click is in another window that window is made the active window. When editing the command-line the cursor can only be positioned on the command-line. When in Insert mode Vim remains in Insert mode. If 'scrolloff' is set, and the cursor is positioned within 'scrolloff' lines from the window border, the text is scrolled. A selection can be started by pressing the left mouse button on the first character, moving the mouse to the last character, then releasing the mouse button. You will not always see the selection until you release the button, only in some versions (GUI, Windows) will the dragging be shown immediately. Note that you can make the text scroll by moving the mouse at least one character in the first/last line in the window when 'scrolloff' is non-zero. In Normal, Visual and Select mode clicking the right mouse button causes the Visual area to be extended. When 'mousemodel' is "popup", the left button has to be used while keeping the shift key pressed. When clicking in a window which is editing another buffer, the Visual or Select mode is stopped. In Normal, Visual and Select mode clicking the right mouse button with the alt key pressed causes the Visual area to become blockwise. When 'mousemodel' is "popup" the left button has to be used with the alt key. Note that this won't work on systems where the window manager consumes the mouse events when the alt key is pressed (it may move the window).
double-click Double, triple and quadruple clicks are supported when the GUI is active, for Windows and for an xterm. For selecting text, extra clicks extend the selection: click selectdouble word or % match <2-LeftMouse> triple line <3-LeftMouse> quadruple rectangular block <4-LeftMouse> Exception: In a Help window a double click jumps to help for the word that is clicked on. A double click on a word selects that word. 'iskeyword' is used to specify which characters are included in a word. A double click on a character that has a match selects until that match (like using "v%"). If the match is an #if/#else/#endif block, the selection becomes linewise. For MS-DOS and xterm the time for double clicking can be set with the 'mousetime' option. For the other systems this time is defined outside of Vim. An example, for using a double click to jump to the tag under the cursor:
map <2-LeftMouse> :exe "tag ". expand("<cword>")<CR>Dragging the mouse with a double click (button-down, button-up, button-down and then drag) will result in whole words to be selected. This continues until the button is released, at which point the selection is per character again. In Insert mode, when a selection is started, Vim goes into Normal mode temporarily. When Visual or Select mode ends, it returns to Insert mode. This is like using CTRL-O in Insert mode. Select mode is used when the 'selectmode' option contains "mouse". drag-status-line When working with several windows, the size of the windows can be changed by dragging the status line with the mouse. Point the mouse at a status line, press the left button, move the mouse to the new position of the status line, release the button. Just clicking the mouse in a status line makes that window the current window, without moving the cursor. If by selecting a window it will change position or size, the dragging of the status line will look confusing, but it will work (just try it).
<MiddleRelease> <MiddleDrag> Mouse clicks can be mapped. The codes for mouse clicks are: code mouse button normal action<LeftMouse> left pressed set cursor position <LeftDrag> left moved while pressed extend selection <LeftRelease> left released set selection end <MiddleMouse> middle pressed paste text at cursor position <MiddleDrag> middle moved while pressed - <MiddleRelease> middle released - <RightMouse> right pressed extend selection <RightDrag> right moved while pressed extend selection <RightRelease> right released set selection end <X1Mouse> X1 button pressed - X1Mouse <X1Drag> X1 moved while pressed - X1Drag <X1Release> X1 button release - X1Release <X2Mouse> X2 button pressed - X2Mouse <X2Drag> X2 moved while pressed - X2Drag <X2Release> X2 button release - X2Release The X1 and X2 buttons refer to the extra buttons found on some mice. The 'Microsoft Explorer' mouse has these buttons available to the right thumb. Currently X1 and X2 only work on Win32 and X11 environments. Examples:
noremap <MiddleMouse> <LeftMouse><MiddleMouse>Paste at the position of the middle mouse button click (otherwise the paste would be done at the cursor position).
noremap <LeftRelease> <LeftRelease>yImmediately yank the selection, when using Visual mode. Note the use of ":noremap" instead of "map" to avoid a recursive mapping.
map <X1Mouse> <C-O>map <X2Mouse> <C-I>
Map the X1 and X2 buttons to go forwards and backwards in the jump list, see CTRL-O and CTRL-I.
mouse-swap-buttons To swap the meaning of the left and right mouse buttons:
noremap <LeftMouse> <RightMouse>noremap <LeftDrag> <RightDrag>noremap <LeftRelease> <RightRelease>noremap <RightMouse> <LeftMouse>noremap <RightDrag> <LeftDrag>noremap <RightRelease> <LeftRelease>noremap g<LeftMouse> <C-RightMouse>noremap g<RightMouse> <C-LeftMouse>noremap! <LeftMouse> <RightMouse>noremap! <LeftDrag> <RightDrag>noremap! <LeftRelease> <RightRelease>noremap! <RightMouse> <LeftMouse>noremap! <RightDrag> <LeftDrag>noremap! <RightRelease> <LeftRelease>
vim:tw=78:ts=8:ft=help:norl: