Vim & Neovim Commands Cheat Sheet — Navigation, Editing & Survival

Essential Vim keybindings, navigation motions, text objects, search-and-replace, and file operations for high-velocity coding.

Essential Survival & Modes

:wq

Write (save) changes to file and quit Vim

:q!

Quit immediately and discard all unsaved changes

i

Enter Insert mode before the cursor position

Esc

Return to Normal mode from any mode

v / V / Ctrl+v

Enter character visual mode / line visual mode / block visual mode

u / Ctrl+r

Undo last change / Redo last undone change

High-Velocity Motions & Navigation

h j k l

Move cursor Left, Down, Up, Right

w / b

Jump forward to start of next word / backward to start of previous word

0 / $ / ^

Jump to absolute line start / line end / first non-blank character

gg / G

Jump to the very first line of file / last line of file

:%s/foo/bar/g

Search and replace all instances of "foo" with "bar" in entire file

ciw

Change Inner Word: delete current word and switch immediately to Insert mode