nvim-window

A simple and opinionated NeoVim plugin for switching between windows in the current tab page.

NOTE: this plugin is considered feature complete, and as such no new features will be added unless I have a need for it myself.

Rationale

In (Neo)Vim you can navigate between windows using Control+W, followed by a motion. For example, to move to the window on the right of the current one you'd press Control+W l. This works for simple scenarios, but gets annoying fast. Consider the following window layout:

+---+---+---+---+
|   |   |   |   |
| A | B | C | D |
|   |   |   |   |
+---+---+---+---+

Assuming window A is the current window your cursor is in, and you want to move to window C, you might press Control+W 2l. This is doable, but having to count the number of steps every time gets tedious.

It gets more annoying when you want to move to a window above your current one, but the window is on the right:

+---+---+---+
|   |   |   |
| A | B | C |
|   |   |   |
+---+---+---+
|     D     |
+-----------+

Assuming window D is active and you want to move to window B, you'd have to take two steps:

• Control+W k to move to window A
• Control+W l to move to window B

While there may be other ways of doing this, the use of Control+W is probably the easiest approach to remember; and it's still annoying.

This is where nvim-window comes in: it makes it trivial to jump between windows (in the current tab page), without the need for knowing how far away they are or relying on a fuzzy finder (and having to type out the window paths).

Using nvim-window, press your binding of choice to activate nvim-window, press one letter (or two, if there are many windows), and the given window becomes active. This makes it much easier to quickly jump between windows.

You can see this in action here:

You can also render the hints to the statusline:

Requirements

NeoVim 0.5 or newer

Limitations

• Limited styling options to keep the code simple
• "Only" handles up to 52 windows in a single tab page
• No hinting of characters as you type (like hop.nvim), to keep the code simple

Installation

First add this plugin using your plugin manager of choice.

lazy.nvim

{
  "yorickpeterse/nvim-window",
  keys = {
    { "<leader>wj", "<cmd>lua require('nvim-window').pick()<cr>", desc = "nvim-window: Jump to window" },
  },
  config = true,
}

vim-plug

Plug 'https://gitlab.com/yorickpeterse/nvim-window.git'

For the exact steps necessary, please refer to your plugin manager's documentation.

Once installed you need to add a key binding, as nvim-window doesn't define any key bindings for you. You can set up a binding like so:

map <silent> <leader>w :lua require('nvim-window').pick()<CR>

I personally use comma (,), as this allows me to switch between windows using (most of the time) only two keys:

map <silent> , :lua require('nvim-window').pick()<CR>

Configuration

The default settings should be good enough for most. In case you want to change them (e.g. by changing the background of the floating window), you can do so as follows:

require('nvim-window').setup({
  -- The characters available for hinting windows.
  chars = {
    'a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h', 'i', 'j', 'k', 'l', 'm', 'n', 'o',
    'p', 'q', 'r', 's', 't', 'u', 'v', 'w', 'x', 'y', 'z'
  },

  -- A group to use for overwriting the Normal highlight group in the floating
  -- window. This can be used to change the background color.
  normal_hl = 'Normal',

  -- The highlight group to apply to the line that contains the hint characters.
  -- This is used to make them stand out more.
  hint_hl = 'Bold',

  -- The border style to use for the floating window.
  border = 'single',

  -- How the hints should be rendered. The possible values are:
  --
  -- - "float" (default): renders the hints using floating windows
  -- - "status": renders the hints to a string and calls `redrawstatus`,
  --   allowing you to show the hints in a status or winbar line
  render = 'float',
})

You can place this in your init.lua before or after defining the mapping. You can also dump it in a different Lua file; just make sure to actually load that file :)

License

All source code in this repository is licensed under the Mozilla Public License version 2.0, unless stated otherwise. A copy of this license can be found in the file "LICENSE".