vimdiff and move among left and right pane

Question

I am using vimdiff for the first time. Online I found written that to move from the left pane you use CTRL + w + Left or right arrow
This does not work for me. But I see that if I press just CTRL + w and press w for a sec and let it go, it switches pane after ~500ms.
Is this how it is supposed to work? Am I doing something wrong?

Please read [`:h window-move-cursor`](http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/windows.html#window-move-cursor). — glts, May 22 '13 at 20:17
Its not supposed to be that slow. The lag on my set up is unnoticeable. Also you can use h or l to move left or right. — FDinoff, May 22 '13 at 20:17
@FDinoff:I tried h but it does not work (at least in my cygwin) — Cratylus, May 23 '13 at 19:32

mMontu · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-19T10:17:14.593

Ctrl+w and right and left arrow can be used to move between any split windows on vim, not only vimdiff splits.

These keys do work here on cygwin; also, Ctrl+w w also moves to the next window, but without the delay you mentioned.

It is possible that you have mapped these keys in your .vimrc or via some vim plugin. You can check this with :map w, :map <left> and :map <right>.

As moving between windows is something that you use often, you may consider using the following mappings:

  nnoremap <C-J> <C-W>j
  nnoremap <C-K> <C-W>k
  nnoremap <C-H> <C-W>h
  nnoremap <C-L> <C-W>l

Then you can use Ctrl+h and Ctrl+l to move left and right, without moving your hands from the home row. And the nnoremap will ensure that these works despite of any other mappings that you may have.

Thanks so much for sharing this option. VSCode makes ctrl+w unusable so these mappings helped a lot. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/73749376/vscode-how-to-switch-window-in-vimdiff-as-ctrlw-closes-the-window — A. K., Sep 16 '22 at 19:17

score 19 · Answer 2 · edited Jan 14 '17 at 14:33

19

Press Ctrl + W and then (after releasing Ctrl + W) press the arrow keys to change the pane.

edited Jan 14 '17 at 14:33

ROMANIA_engineer

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answered Jul 17 '15 at 14:25

jonny_sod

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Grzegorz Bielański · Answer 3 · 2017-05-26T05:10:21.657

9

It is very useful to use set mouse=a in your .vimrc file. It gives you possibility to switch between windows using mouse. Additionally you can resize windows using it.

If you prefer to use keyboard I have also mapped arrow keys in .vimrc in this way:

map <C-Left> <C-W>j
map <C-Down> <C-W>k
map <C-Up> <C-W>h
map <C-Right> <C-W>l

edited May 26 '17 at 05:10

answered Feb 19 '15 at 11:09

Grzegorz Bielański

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Grzegorz, thanks for the tip.For me **set mouse=a** worked but **set mouse=a'** showed an error. – sob May 26 '17 at 05:04
It was typo. It should be mouse=a – Grzegorz Bielański May 26 '17 at 05:11
what's the reverse of 'set mouse=a'? I forgot. – Chan Kim Sep 07 '20 at 08:27
oh it was `set mouse=` – Chan Kim Sep 07 '20 at 08:54
@GrzegorzBielański Hi, how am I use the keyboard with the .vimrc setting above? can I move the center divider left or right using keyboard? – Chan Kim Sep 07 '20 at 08:56

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 16 '22 at 19:58

1

You can also use :wincmd w for next window, and :wincmd W for previous window.

The :wincmd is especially useful when ctrl+w is captured by the environment. For example see: https://stackoverflow.com/a/73749587/811335

answered Sep 16 '22 at 19:58

A. K.

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score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Aug 03 '16 at 12:26

0

To move among left and right pane, Press ctrl+w and then ctrl+r. This is both left and right vice-versa.

answered Aug 03 '16 at 12:26

Lakshmi Balan

198
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This is for window rotation, not for moving between windows. `:h ctrl-w_ctrl-r` : "Rotate windows downward/rightwards. ... The cursor remains in the same window." – Stephen C Jan 07 '21 at 21:47

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Jul 05 '23 at 12:08

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Please go to differ line and do "dp" from left to right and "do" from right to left

answered Jul 05 '23 at 12:08

Arsen Nersisyan

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vimdiff and move among left and right pane

6 Answers6