Moving Around · Onivim 2 User Manual

Basic Cursor Movement

In normal mode, the cursor can be moved with the following keys:

h - move left
j - move down
l - move right
k - move up

These keys can be prefixed with a number: 10j would jump down 10 lines.

You can jump to around a buffer with the G family of commands:

gg - Jump to the top of a buffer
G - Jump to the bottom of a buffer
0-9*G - Jump to line number digit. For example, 50G jumps to line 50.

Moving around with G and gg

It also helps to be able to move around within a line:

0 (or Home) - Move to the first character in a line.
^ - Move to the first non-blank character of a line.
$ (or End) - Move to the last character of a line.

Searching

Often, we have an idea of what we're looking for - maybe a keyword or part of a name.

The search motion - / - can be used for moving the cursor to a particular search string:

/search-stringReturn will search forward, moving the cursor the next instance of search-string found in the buffer
?search-stringReturn will search backward, moving the cursor to the previous instance of search-string
n will move the cursor to the next instance of the last used search-string
N will move the cursor to the previous instance of the last used search-string
* will search for the next instance of the identifier under the cursor.
# will search for the previous instance of the identifier under the cursor.
% will move the cursor to a matching bracket.

While searching with / or ?, matches will be automatically highlighted in the visible editors.

Control+L will clear the search highlights.

Sneak Mode

Vim's model of modal editing, which Onivim is based off of, was really designed for terminal user interfaces.

However, Onivim provides a graphical user interface - and we want the entirety of our user interface to be keyboard-accessible. If you can't do something via the keyboard, it's a bug!

'Sneak mode' provides a bridge for features that are very visual. By pressing Control+g, you can enter sneak mode:

When sneak mode is active, all visual elements will be tagged with an identifier - typing that identifier will perform the same action as clicking with the mouse.