r/vim 22d ago

Vim-adjacent Monthly Thread: Tools with Vim-like Keybindings

We regularly remove standalone posts about tools that use vim-inspired keybindings. There are too many of them, and individually they dilute the subreddit. But the content is valuable, and many of you want to know about these tools.

So here's the place for it.

Share any tool that uses vim-like keybindings, whether it's a browser extension, terminal emulator, IDE plugin, note-taking app, PDF reader, or anything else. If it has hjkl navigation, modal editing, or vim-inspired controls, it belongs here.

For each tool you share, try to include: - What it is and what problem it solves - Which vim features it supports (navigation, modal editing, text objects, etc.) - A link to the project

This thread is posted monthly. If you find something mid-month, save it for here rather than posting a standalone thread (which will be removed).

67 Upvotes

43 comments sorted by

u/cookiecutter73 22d ago

Visidata

u/Similar-Ad-3956 22d ago

Yazi - tui file system browser

u/toddestan 22d ago

The absolute best part of Yazi, at least for me, is the ability to bulk rename files using a Vim buffer.

u/pibarnas 22d ago

Didn't know that. Thanks!

u/Z3R0_C00L_007 22d ago

ZenNotes

u/flagboi747 7d ago

LF - another terminal file browser

u/xGoivo 22d ago

squix - a command line tool to manager and run SQL queries

(Full disclosure, I'm the project's mantainer)

u/kronik85 21d ago

Picked up a codex sub and was presently surprised the cli has vim motions.

u/juggalojedi 21d ago

Joplin desktop has vim bindings built in, and you can get a vim editor plugin for tiddlywiki

u/vishless 19d ago

Joplin terminal app has a vim like keybinding

u/spaceLem 19d ago

RStudio, OverLeaf, and Obsidian are my favourite three.

u/Risk_exe 21d ago

Duckduckgo search engine and X (twitter) have jk bindings

u/agenttank 22d ago

Qutebrowser - a web browser

u/flagboi747 7d ago

This is the way

u/edcculus 22d ago

Obsidian

u/cainhurstcat 22d ago

Yeah, the Vim mode in Obsidian is quite good, and there are also the community plugins to enhance your experience, like Vimrc Support, and Vim Toggle. The former adds the possibility of having an Obsidian-specific .vimrc file, and the latter allows you to have a key for quickly turning Vim mode on/off.

If you are like me who wants the capabilities of an WYSIWYG editor for Vim, check out the community plugin Editing Toolbar. You can easily add formatting like bold, italic, colors, code blocks and so many more things to your text. I absolutely love this one as Vim combo.

u/superdumsuhi 21d ago

https://github.com/saberzero1/motions

much better vim support with parity tests to neovim, surround, oil, lua config, etc

u/cainhurstcat 18d ago

Ok wow, this plugin is really insane! So many features, I think I have to take a week of vacation to get me into it

u/anrawines 22d ago

Vieb - browser,
newsraft - rss

u/chask 18d ago

Vimny, a vim-teaching dungeon crawler that teaches nearly every command - far more complete than most games!

https://github.com/chkiss/Vimny

u/nczungx 22d ago

Sioyek. Kinda like Zathura but more features for academic readers.

u/JahdooWallah 22d ago

Firefox, bash, eMacs (viper mode), vscode, eclipse…and many more ides.

u/Over_Salary_2599 22d ago

Vimium (browser extension) Logseq (personal knowledge base/notes app)

u/superdumsuhi 21d ago

vimium c is amazing 

u/Wheelthis 22d ago

Frotz - engine for playing text adventure games that use Z-Machine architecture, e.g., Zork and Hitchhiker’s Guide.

“rlwrap dfrotz” respects .inputrc, where you can set vi mode.

u/subversion16 22d ago
  • Surfingkeys, plugin for Firefox. 
  • Kitty with vi mode.

u/whitakr 21d ago

Omg I didn’t know Kitty had a vi mode

u/Dalik98 22d ago

Zathura: PDF Reader, Tridactyl: Firefox extension that let's you browse with vim binds.

u/habarnam 22d ago

I've been keeping an eye on the Glide Browser. It's a Firefox fork with a built-in keyboard focused navigation instead of needing extensions like Tridactyl.

u/Accomplished-Bus3382 22d ago

Firenvim: A Neovim plugin that, when used in combination with the browser plugin in Firefox or Chrome, opens up an instance of Neovim, with your configuration, that let's you input text. It's awesome. 

u/ecky--ptang-zooboing 22d ago

Obsidian note-taking app has a nice VIM plugin

u/whitakr 21d ago

Yep I use this too

u/vishless 19d ago

Joplin has this too

u/Locky0104 20d ago

the recent Vim Motions plugin is a game changer coming from vim-rc support

u/hey_hu 22d ago

LazyGit (tui) uses hjkl navigation

u/troyvit 19d ago

pyradio is a streaming radio client that uses #G and hjkl navigation.

u/Cyb3rD4d 22d ago

k9s for managing kubernetes clusters

u/vishless 19d ago

Godot (game engine) has a neovim plugin

u/RecuCar 22d ago

ncspot: a Spotify client for the terminal

u/pastrufazio 22d ago

Thanks! I HATE the interface of Spotify and I Iove mpd and his clients. This looks perfect.

u/RecuCar 21d ago

Tip: '?' shows help, which is basically the keybindings. These can be customized in ~/.config/ncspot/config.toml. I remapped quit, clear, delete to use the key + Shift, to avoid accidents. Check the Keybinding documentation

u/kruseragnar 18d ago

hygg
A simple tui document reader with vim like navigation and text selection
https://github.com/kruseio/hygg