How to flip windows in vim?

Question

Possible Duplicate:
To switch from vertical split to horizontal split fast in Vim

If I have 2 horizontally split windows, how to rotate them to get 2 vertically split windows?

And how to switch buffers?

Switch *buffers*? Or *windows*? – johnsyweb May 20 '11 at 11:55 — johnsyweb, May 20 '11 at 11:55
@Johnsyweb switch buffers, rotate windows. But I got it... – Arnis Lapsa May 20 '11 at 11:55 — Arnis Lapsa, May 20 '11 at 11:55

sehe · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-20T12:04:21.693

297

If you have them split vertically C-wJ to move one to the bottom

If you have them split horizontally C-wL to move one to the right

To rotate in a 'column' or 'row' of split windows, C-wC-r

The following commands can be used to change the window layout. For example, when there are two vertically split windows, CTRL-W K will change that in horizontally split windows. CTRL-W H does it the other way around.

edited May 20 '11 at 12:04

answered May 20 '11 at 11:53

sehe

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I'm finally starting to "feel". Amazing how long I have survived w/o these commands. – Arnis Lapsa May 20 '11 at 11:58
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To rotate split windows, I believe you only actually need "C-w r", not "C-w C-r". – Tom Lord Jan 08 '14 at 13:55
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@TomLord That works too. Although that's not needing "less". It's just different. And I happen to think "C-w r" is a bit awkward (especially if repeated) – sehe Jan 08 '14 at 14:38
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@AmagicalFishy It's just `wincmd` with cursor key mnemonics: http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/windows.html#:wincmd – sehe Jan 29 '16 at 14:49
Doesn't work properly for 4 windows open - rather than flip the windows vertically or horizonally with one another, it pushes the window to a separate level in either direction. For 2, "C-w x" is sufficient – arcseldon Nov 04 '17 at 02:59
Reading the `:help CTRL-W_K` helped me remember the keybinds after reading the description of what the keybinds are really doing. – Dylan Landry May 27 '20 at 14:04

Nick · Answer 2 · 2011-05-20T12:10:15.330

103

Ctrl-w H or type :wincmd H to go from horizontal to vertical layout.

Ctrl-w J or type :wincmd J to go from vertical to horizontal layout.

Ctrl-w r or type :wincmd r to swap the two buffers but keep the window layout the same.

Ctrl-w w or type :wincmd w to move the cursor between the two windows/buffers.

You may wish to bind one or more of these sequences to make it faster to type. I put this in my .vimrc so that ,l moves the cursor to the next buffer in the current tab:

let mapleader = ","
nmap <Leader>l <C-w>w

edited May 20 '11 at 12:10

answered May 20 '11 at 11:59

Nick

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@Nick The first two really answer the question and the second two go above and beyond, which is incredibly useful! The "swap" function is particularly useful for me when I translate documents, because I prefer having source languages always on a specific side and I do not always open them in that order :) – Jonathan Komar Sep 05 '16 at 14:06
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`Ctrl-w` `r` is the best! – gabe Feb 19 '21 at 03:33
Big respect for showing the actual commands to remap this properly. – Martin Braun May 29 '23 at 14:52

score 17 · Answer 3 · edited Sep 10 '12 at 16:01

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CTRL-W SHIFT-H will rotate the orientation, CTRL-W H moves to the left window, CTRL-W L moves to the right. See

:help split

and

:help ^w

for more information.

edited Sep 10 '12 at 16:01

Keith Pinson

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answered May 20 '11 at 11:42

William Pursell

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That one is for switching buffers. How to change direction of windows? – Arnis Lapsa May 20 '11 at 11:43
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@Arnis ^wH will change the orientation of the window layout. ^wh moves to the window on the left. The operations are case sensitive. – William Pursell May 20 '11 at 12:12
AWESOME! I Love it H and L – Developer Jun 17 '15 at 19:57

score 10 · Answer 4 · answered May 23 '11 at 08:20

The current answers all work great if you only have two windows open. If you have more than that, the logic for moving windows around can get hairy.

I have this in my .vimrc to allow me to 'yank' and 'delete' a buffer and then paste it into a window over the current buffer or as a [v]split.

fu! PasteWindow(direction) "{{{
    if exists("g:yanked_buffer")
        if a:direction == 'edit'
            let temp_buffer = bufnr('%')
        endif

        exec a:direction . " +buffer" . g:yanked_buffer

        if a:direction == 'edit'
            let g:yanked_buffer = temp_buffer
        endif
    endif
endf "}}}

"yank/paste buffers
:nmap <silent> <leader>wy  :let g:yanked_buffer=bufnr('%')<cr>
:nmap <silent> <leader>wd  :let g:yanked_buffer=bufnr('%')<cr>:q<cr>
:nmap <silent> <leader>wp :call PasteWindow('edit')<cr>
:nmap <silent> <leader>ws :call PasteWindow('split')<cr>
:nmap <silent> <leader>wv :call PasteWindow('vsplit')<cr>
:nmap <silent> <leader>wt :call PasteWindow('tabnew')<cr>

not sure how your function is working - perhaps add a simple visual example — serup, Aug 25 '16 at 09:59
This is brilliant. Much better than `C-W J` and friends. I would extend it with `wP` to `top split` and `wV` to `:set nosplitright \| call PasteWindow('vsplit') \| set splitright`. And `wr` makes more sense ('replace') than `we`. — zelk, Sep 24 '17 at 14:32

How to flip windows in vim?

4 Answers4