mg979 / Vim Visual Multi

vim-visual-multi

It's called vim-visual-multi in analogy with visual-block, but the plugin works mostly from normal mode.

Basic usage:

• select words with Ctrl-N (like Ctrl-d in Sublime Text/VS Code)
• create cursors vertically with Ctrl-Down/Ctrl-Up
• select one character at a time with Shift-Arrows
• press n/N to get next/previous occurrence
• press [/] to select next/previous cursor
• press q to skip current and get next occurrence
• press Q to remove current cursor/selection
• start insert mode with i,a,I,A

Two main modes:

• in cursor mode commands work as they would in normal mode
• in extend mode commands work as they would in visual mode
• press Tab to switch between «cursor» and «extend» mode

Most vim commands work as expected (motions, r to replace characters, ~ to change case, etc). Additionally you can:

• run macros/ex/normal commands at cursors
• align cursors
• transpose selections
• add patterns with regex, or from visual mode

And more... of course, you can enter insert mode and autocomplete will work.

Installation

With vim-plug:

Plug 'mg979/vim-visual-multi', {'branch': 'master'}

Documentation

:help visual-multi

For some specific topic it's often:

:help vm-some-topic

Tutorial

To run the tutorial:

vim -Nu path/to/visual-multi/tutorialrc

Wiki

The wiki was the first documentation for the plugin, but many pictures are outdated and contain wrong mappings. Still, you can take a look.

You could read at least the Quick Start.

Some (sometimes very old) random pics:

Insert mode with autocomplete, alignment (mappings in pic have changed, don't trust them)

Undo/Redo edits and selections

Alternate cursor/extend mode, motions (even %), reverse direction (as in visual mode) and extend from the back. At any time you can switch from extend to cursor mode and viceversa.

Select inside/around brackets/quotes/etc:

Select operator, here shown with 'wellle/targets.vim' plugin: sib, sia, saa + selection shift

Synched column transposition

Unsynched transposition (cycle all regions, also in different lines)

Shift regions left and right (M-S-<>)

Find words under cursor, add new words (patterns stack), navigate regions, skip them, add regions with regex.

Normal/Visual/Ex commands at cursors

Macros. Shorter lines are skipped when adding cursors vertically.

Some editing functions: yank, delete, paste from register, paste block from yanked regions

Case conversion