Are you new to Vim, the only legitimate text editor? Good thing you're on this page, since it contains the ultimate cheat sheet for all of the most important Vim commands, keyboard shortcuts, and hotkeys.

Vim Cheat Sheet Infographic

Vim Commands Cheat Sheet, Copy-Pasteable

Exiting Vim

• :w  - Write (Save)
• :wq - Write and quit
• :q  - Quit, fails if unsaved
• :q! - Quit, even if unsaved

Modes

• ESC    - Return to normal mode
• i      - Insert at cursor position
• a      - Insert after cursor position
• o      - Insert on line below cursor
• v      - Enter visual mode
• ctrl+v - Enter visual mode (vertical)
• V      - Enter visual mode (full lines)

Toggling Case

• u [in visual mode] - To lowercase
• U [in visual mode] - To uppercase
• Undo/Redo
• u      - Undo
• ctrl+r - Redo

Movement

• $     - Jump to end of line
• ^     - Jump to start of line
• h     - Move left
• j     - Move down
• k     - Move up
• l     - Move right
• H     - Move to top of screen
• M     - Move to middle of screen
• L     - Move to bottom of screen
• gg    - Move to start of file
• G     - Move to end of file
• 420gg - Move to line 420
• w     - Jump to start of next word
• b     - Jump to start of prev word

Search

• /something    - Search for string
• n             - Jump to next match
• N             - Jump to prev match
• /something\c  - Case insensitive search

Copy-Pasting

• y  [in visual mode] - Copy highlighted text
• yy                  - Copy the current line
• d  [in visual mode] - Cut highlighted text
• dd                  - Cut the current line
• Ctrl+Shift+V        - Paste from external clipboard

Find-and-Replace

• Find and Replace All in Document
  • :%s/find/replace/g
• Find and Replace All on Current Line
  • :s/find/replace/g  [in visual mode]  
• Find and Replace All in Highlighted Section
  • :'<,'>s/find/replace/g  [in visual mode] 
• Find and Replace All in Document
  • :%s/address/replace/g

Important Regular Expression (REGEX) Characters

• . - Any single character
• * - Up to unlimited characters

Bonus Notes

Also see the infographic "Visualizing the Information Superhighway," learn about the best keyboard to use with Vim, and search for more content tagged as being about Vim.

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August R. GarciaLARPing as a Sysadmi...Portland, ORJoined 02 December, 2018Site Owner

August Garcia is some guy who used to sell Viagra on the Internet. He made this website to LARP as a sysadmin while posting about garbage like user-agent spoofing, spintax, the only good keyboard, virtual assitants from Pakistan, links with the rel="nofollow" attribute, proxies, sin, the developer console, literally every link building method, and other junk.

Available at arg@256kilobytes.com, via Twitter, or arg.256kilobytes.com. Open to business inquiries based on availability.