The absolute easiest way to switch between buffers is using the H and L (i.e. Shift-h and Shift-l) keys. By this point you are hopefully intimately familiar with the fact that h means left and l means right for cursor movement. If you press the shift key with these, you will switch the buffer visible in the currently active window to whichever buffer is to the left or right of the current buffer in the buffer line.

Alternatively, you can use the [b and ]b commands which map to the same thing.

Annoyingly, you will find that these keybindings do not accept counts. So you cannot, by default, use 2L to jump two tabs to the right. This frustrated me because I know the underlying :bnext and :bprev commands do accept a count.

It turns out that LazyVim maps these to a BufferLineCycleNext command provided by the underlying plugin, bufferline.nvim, and that plugin doesn’t, as far as I can tell, support counts.

Upon investigation I learned that the BufferLineCycle* commands exist because the plugin can configure some kind of sorting mechanism on the buffer list. But LazyVim isn’t configured to use that mechanism. So we can use the old-fashioned commands instead. To do so, create a new file in your plugins configuration folder named (something like) extend-bufferline.lua:

The vim.v.count1 variable is set whenever a keybinding is called with a count, so it can be accessed inside the callback and passed to the Vim command using string concatenation (the .. operator). Restart Neovim and you can do things like 3L to jump three buffers to the right on the buffer line.

Another keybinding you will want to reach for when jumping between buffers is <Space><Backtick>. This one simply jumps between the current file and the file that was most recently opened in the current window. In Vim parlance, this is referred to as “the alternate file.”

If you have a large number of buffers open, the buffer line can get awfully crowded. At some point, it will show two arrows to the left and/or right of the buffer bar so you can tell that there are “hidden” buffers. When you navigate through buffers, it will always ensure the active buffer is visible. Here’s a very full buffer line with four buffers hidden to the left and two hidden to the right:

If you have this many buffers open, you may find it easier to use Telescope or Fzf.lua (depending which you have enabled) to search through the open buffers. The keybinding to pop up a filterable, scrollable list of buffers is <Space><comma>. It has the exact same contents as the buffer line, but it’s a different interaction effect.

This is useful if you are working on large projects that have so many files that searching through them with <Space><Space> is difficult. Open the relatively low number of files that you actually need to access as active buffers, so they are easy to filter in the <Space><comma> buffer list.

Alternatively, you can use Neo-tree to navigate open buffers. If you show the Neo-tree sidebar, you’ll see that it has some “accordion”-style widgets, named Neo-Tree, Neo-Tree Git and Neo-Tree Buffers. Neo-tree has a variety of sources for navigating tree-like interfaces, though these three are the only ones preconfigured by LazyVim.

To switch between the accordions (Neo-tree calls them “sources”), you can click a different heading with the mouse, or use the < and > keys to cycle through them. Alternatively, use the <Space>be key sequence to directly show the “Buffer Explorer”.

Once the Neo-Tree Buffers view is visible, it will look something like this:

You will often want to close the current buffer without closing the split(s) it is currently open in. The keybinding for this is <Space>bd, where <Space>b pops up a useful menu of other buffer related functions, and d means “delete”. You aren’t actually deleting the underlying file when you do this; you’re just deleting the buffer from Vim’s memory: i.e. closing it.

You can also just press bd if you currently have Neo-tree’s buffer view focused.

I find that closing buffers is too common a task to deserve three keys, so I have added the following to the keys array I defined in extend-bufferline.lua:

Here are several other commands you can use to close buffers:

The last one needs some clarification. You can toggle a “pin” on any active buffer using <Space>bp. You’ll see a pin icon show up to the left of the buffer name. The only purpose of this pin is to keep it open if you want to close all the “less important” (unpinned) files using <Space>bP. I personally don’t use buffer pinning, so for me, <Space>bP is a shortcut for “close all buffers”; useful when I complete one task and am ready to start another.

You can also close buffers directly from the Telescope or FZF buffer picker interface (from <Space>,). If you use FZF, just hit Control-x to close the buffer that the cursor is on. If you use Telescope, the Alt-d keybinding should do the same.

Now that you know all about buffers, let’s discuss windows.

Windows in LazyVim can be created on the fly at any time. To split the current window in half “vertically” with one window on the left and a new window on the right, use the <Space>wv keymap.

When you create a split, the new window will contain another view of the buffer you were already viewing, side by side. But once the split is opened, you can switch the buffer in that window using any of the buffer management commands or by opening a new file with any of the tools we’ve previously discussed for opening files.

To create a horizontal split between two windows (one above the other), use <Space>ws. The mnemonic for this is unfortunately just “split”. They weren’t able to reuse <Space>wh because that is already used for switching windows.

You already know you can open a file in the current window from Neo-Tree by moving your cursor to the file and pressing <Enter>. You can also use the s key in Neo-Tree to open it in a vertical split (irritatingly asymmetric with the <Space>ws key to create a horizontal split in a normal buffer). The shifted form, S in Neo-Tree is used to create a horizontal split.

If you are using Telescope or Fzf.lua to open files, you’ll use yet another set of keybindings! To open a file in a vertical split, use the Control-v keybinding. This works in both Insert and Normal mode in the Telescope prompt area, but only in Insert mode with Fzf.lua. To open it in a horizontal split you use Control-x (I know: WTF, right?)

Finally, if you use mini.files, you can open a file in a split sensibly using the same keybindings as in a normal window (<Space>wv and <Space>ws).

You can move your cursor between window splits by holding the control key along with any of the h, j, k, or l home row "arrow-key" directions. They can also be prefixed with numerical counts if you want to skip over a window to get to the next one.

Alternatively, you can use the same keys with <Space>w. So <Space>wh will move to the window to the left of the current one.

You can close a window at any time using one of three keybindings:

In all three cases, the buffer remains open in the bufferline. Only the window split is closed.

If, instead, you want to close all splits except the active one, use <Space>wo for “only this window” or “close other” (whichever is easier to remember).

In my unconventional opinion, the easiest way to resize Vim splits is to use…​ the mouse. There is a vertical bar between vertical splits that you can click and drag on. The mouse cursor doesn’t change to give you any feedback that you can click and drag on it, but it works.

For horizontal splits (when two windows are one above the other), there is no obvious bar to click. But you can actually just drag on the status bar of the “upper” window to move it up or down.

If you insist on using the keyboard, the keybindings are in the <Space>w menu: <Space>w+ and <Space>w- to increase or decrease the height of the active window in a horizontal split, and <Space>w> or <Space>w< to increase or decrease the width of a vertical split. They only move by one row or column at a time, so you will almost certainly want to prefix these commands with a count greater than 10, or use “Hydra” mode, discussed next.

To change everything to a “default” size, use <Space>w= which will make all the windows “equally high and wide.”

Occasionally, you’ll want to run several window commands in a row, for example when resizing a window or creating a layout containing several splits. Having to type <Space>w between each command would be rather tedious in these situations, so the which-key plugin gives us Hydra mode.

To enter Hydra window mode, press <Space>w<Space>. All this does is “pin” the window menu open, so you can issue multiple keypresses from it without automatically leaving the menu. For example, <Space>w<Space>vvvh will create four splits (three vertical and one horizontal).

To leave Hydra mode just hit <Escape> and return to your normal editing.