IdeaVim

IdeaVim is a Vim engine for JetBrains IDEs.

Contact maintainers:

• Bug tracker
• @IdeaVim on Twitter
• Chat on gitter
• IdeaVim Channel on JetBrains Server

Resources:

• Plugin homepage
• Plugin on Marketplace
• Changelog
• Continuous integration builds

Compatibility

IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, GoLand, CLion, PhpStorm, WebStorm, RubyMine, DataGrip, DataSpell, Rider, Cursive, Android Studio, and other JetBrains IDEs.

Setup

• IdeaVim can be installed via Settings | Plugins. See the detailed instructions.

• Use Tools | Vim in the menu to enable or disable vim.

• Use the ~/.ideavimrc file as an analog of ~/.vimrc (learn more). The XDG standard is supported, as well.

• Shortcut conflicts can be resolved by using:

  • On Linux & Windows: File | Settings | Editor | Vim & File | Settings | Keymap,
  • On macOS: Preferences | Editor | Vim & Preferences | Keymap,
  • Regular Vim mappings in the ~/.ideavimrc file.

Get Early Access

Would you like to try new features and fixes? Join the Early Access Program and receive EAP builds as updates!

1. Click the IdeaVim icon in the status bar | Early Access Program | Subscribe to EAP

Or subscribe to EAP updates manually:

1. Open Settings | Plugins
2. Click the gear icon :gear:, select Manage Plugin Repositories, and add the following url:

https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugins/eap/ideavim

See the changelog for the list of unreleased features.

It is important to distinguish EAP builds from traditional pre-release software. Please note that the quality of EAP versions may at times be way below even usual beta standards.

You can always leave your feedback with:

• @IdeaVim in Twitter
• Bug tracker

Summary of Supported Vim Features

Here are some examples of supported vim features and commands:

• Normal / insert / visual / select / etc. modes
• Motion / deletion / change / window / etc. commands
• Key mappings
• Marks / Macros / Digraphs / Registers
• Some set commands
• Full Vim regexps for search and search/replace
• Vim web help
• ~/.ideavimrc configuration file
• Vim script
• IdeaVim plugins

See also:

• Top feature requests and bugs

Files

• ~/.ideavimrc
  • Your IdeaVim-specific Vim initialization commands

""" Map leader to space ---------------------
let mapleader=" "

""" Plugins  --------------------------------
set surround
set multiple-cursors
set commentary
set argtextobj
set easymotion
set textobj-entire
set ReplaceWithRegister

""" Plugin settings -------------------------
let g:argtextobj_pairs="[:],(:),<:>"

""" Common settings -------------------------
set showmode
set so=5
set incsearch
set nu

""" Idea specific settings ------------------
set ideajoin
set ideastatusicon=gray
set idearefactormode=keep

""" Mappings --------------------------------
map <leader>f <Plug>(easymotion-s)
map <leader>e <Plug>(easymotion-f)

map <leader>d <Action>(Debug)
map <leader>r <Action>(RenameElement)
map <leader>c <Action>(Stop)
map <leader>z <Action>(ToggleDistractionFreeMode)

map <leader>s <Action>(SelectInProjectView)
map <leader>a <Action>(Annotate)
map <leader>h <Action>(Vcs.ShowTabbedFileHistory)
map <S-Space> <Action>(GotoNextError)

map <leader>b <Action>(ToggleLineBreakpoint)
map <leader>o <Action>(FileStructurePopup)

" Show a few lines of context around the cursor. Note that this makes the
" text scroll if you mouse-click near the start or end of the window.
set scrolloff=5

" Do incremental searching.
set incsearch

" Don't use Ex mode, use Q for formatting.
map Q gq

You can read your ~/.vimrc file from ~/.ideavimrc with this command:

source ~/.vimrc

Also note that if you have overridden the user.home JVM option, this will affect where IdeaVim looks for your .ideavimrc file. For example, if you have -Duser.home=/my/alternate/home then IdeaVim will source /my/alternate/home/.ideavimrc instead of ~/.ideavimrc.

Alternatively, you can set up initialization commands using XDG standard. Put your settings to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/ideavim/ideavimrc file.

IdeaVim Plugins

See doc/IdeaVim Plugins.md

Executing IDE Actions

IdeaVim adds various commands for listing and executing arbitrary IDE actions as Ex commands or via :map command mappings:

Executing actions:

• <Action>({action_id})
  • For the mappings you can use a special <Action> keyword. Don't forget the parentheses.
  • E.g. map gh <Action>(ShowErrorDescription) <- execute hover on gh.
  • :warning: Mappings to <Action> don't work with noremap. If you know the case when it's needed, please let us know.
• :action {action_id}
  • Execute an action by {action_id}. Works from Ex command line.
  • Please don't use :action in mappings. Use <Action> instead.

Finding action IDs:

• IJ provides IdeaVim: track action IDs command to show the id of the executed actions. This command can be found in "Search everywhere" (double shift).

  "Track action IDs" Details (click to see)

  

• :actionlist [pattern]

  • Find IDE actions by id or keymap pattern (E.g. :actionlist extract, :actionlist <C-D)

Examples:

" Map \r to the Reformat Code action
:map \r <Action>(ReformatCode)

" Map <leader>d to start debug
:map <leader>d <Action>(Debug)

" Map \b to toggle the breakpoint on the current line
:map \b <Action>(ToggleLineBreakpoint)

Some popular actions:

ShowHoverInfo - Quick Documentation and Error Description
QuickImplementations - Quick Definition

Vim Script

IdeaVim can execute custom scripts that are written with Vim Script. At the moment we support all language features, but not all of the built-in functions and options are supported.

Additionally, you may be interested in the Vim Script Discussion.

IDE specific options

You can evaluate the has('ide') function call and get 1 if it was called with IdeaVim or 0 if the function was called from Vim/NeoVim.
The option &ide contains the name and edition of your IDE, for example, "IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate Edition".
To see its value for the current IDE you are using, execute the :echo &ide command.
To write an IDE-specific configuration, use Vim's regexp match operators =~? (case-insensitive) / =~# (case-sensitive)

Example config:

" options and mappings that are supported by both Vim and IdeaVim
set nu
set relativenumber

if has('ide')
  " mappings and options that exist only in IdeaVim
  map <leader>f <Action>(GotoFile)
  map <leader>g <Action>(FindInPath)
  map <leader>b <Action>(Switcher)

  if &ide =~? 'intellij idea'
    if &ide =~? 'community'
      " some mappings and options for IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition
    elseif &ide =~? 'ultimate'
      " some mappings and options for IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate Edition
    endif
  elseif &ide =~? 'pycharm'
    " PyCharm specific mappings and options
  endif
else
  " some mappings for Vim/Neovim
  nnoremap <leader>f <cmd>Telescope find_files<cr>
endif

:gem: Contributing

The power of contributing drives IdeaVim :muscle:. Even small contributions matter!

See the contribution guide in CONTRIBUTING.md to start bringing your value to the project.

😎 In 2025, we launched a rewards program. See the guide for details.

Authors

See AUTHORS.md for a list of authors and contributors.

IdeaVim tips and tricks

• Use the power of IJ and Vim:

  • set ideajoin to enable join via the IDE. See the examples.
  • Make sure ideaput is enabled for clipboard to enable native IJ insertion in Vim.
  • Sync IJ bookmarks and IdeaVim global marks: set ideamarks (works for marks with capital letters only)
  • Check out more ex commands.

• Use your vim settings with IdeaVim. Put source ~/.vimrc in ~/.ideavimrc.

• Control the status bar icon via the ideastatusicon option.

• Not familiar with the default behaviour during a refactoring? See the idearefactormode option.

Some facts about Vim

Let’s relax and have some fun now! Here are a few things we've found interesting during development and would like to share with you.

• There are no such commands as dd, yy, or cc. For example, dd is not a separate command for deleting the line, but a d command with a d motion.
  Wait, but there isn't a d motion in Vim! That’s right, and that’s why Vim has a dedicated set of commands for which it checks whether the command equals to motion and if so, it executes _ motion instead.
  _ is an interesting motion that isn't even documented in vi, and it refers to the current line. So, commands like dd, yy, and similar ones are simply translated to d_, y_, etc. Here is the source of this knowledge.

• x, D, and & are not separate commands either. They are synonyms of dl, d$, and :s\r, respectively. Here is the full list of synonyms.

• You can read a post about how modes work in Vim and IdeaVim.

• Have you ever used U after dd? Don't even try.

• A lot of variables that refer to visual mode start with two uppercase letters, e.g. VIsual_active. Some examples. As mentioned here, this was done this way to avoid the clash with X11.

• Other strange things from vi:

  • ":3" jumps to line 3
  • ":3|..." prints line 3
  • ":|" prints current line

• Vim script doesn't skip white space before comma. F(a ,b) => E475.

• Fancy constants for undolevels:

  The local value is set to -123456 when the global value is to be used.

• Vi (not Vim) is a POSIX standard, and has a spec! Vim is mostly POSIX compliant when Vi compatibility is selected with the 'compatible' option, but there are still some differences that can be changed with 'copoptions'. The spec is interesting because it documents the behaviour of different commands in a stricter style than the user documentation, describing the current line and column after the command, for example. More details can be found by reading :help posix.

• The Vim documentation contains many easter eggs. We encounter them occasionally, but GitHub user mikesmithgh has compiled a substantial collection here.

  • In addition to :call err_teapot(), which returns E418: I'm a teapot, there is also :call err_teapot(1), which returns E503: Coffee is currently not available. Naturally, this is also supported in IdeaVim.

• Insert mode has all Ctrl keys mapped, except Ctrl-B. In the documentation, it is marked as "CTRL-B in Insert mode gone". Call :h i_CTRL-B-gone in Vim to read why Ctrl-B was removed.

License

IdeaVim is licensed under the MIT license.

Third-party components and licenses are listed in ThirdPartyLicenses.md.

All releases before 2.0.0 were licensed under terms of GPL-2.0 or later. The last commit before switch to MIT is 05852b07c6090ad40fde7d3cafe0b074604f7ac5. You can read more about the license change here: https://github.com/JetBrains/ideavim/discussions/543