{"slug": "neovim", "name": "Neovim", "category": "editors", "category_name": "Editors and IDEs", "description": "Vim-based, extensible terminal text editor with Lua scripting and built-in LSP support.", "recommenders": 56, "commenters": 113, "warners": 7, "score": 57.256, "rising": 1.93, "first": "2025-11-01", "latest": "2026-10-30", "why": "Liked as a fast, lightweight terminal editor with LSP, Treesitter and Lua extensibility, and it pairs well with AI coding agents.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 63, "neutral": 58, "compare": 4, "warn": 7}, "spark": [1, 3, 5, 3, 5, 3, 10, 7, 8, 7, 6, 5], "listed": true, "loved": ["Terminal workflow", "AI agent pairing"], "caveat": "Fragile configs", "short_quote": "NeoVim gives me everything I was looking for in Zed: Speed, a polished UI, quick startup, not overloaded.", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": "github.com/neovim/neovim", "official_url": "https://neovim.io", "pricing": "open source", "aliases": ["Neovim", "neovim", "NeoVim"], "verdict": [{"text": "Liked as a fast, lightweight terminal editor", "cites": [{"id": 790407392, "item_id": 49400462, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49400462", "by": "israrkhan", "date": "2026-08-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "They take less memory. compare vscode vs nvim.", "excerpt": "TUIs, work on several operating systems. I use same set of apps across Mac, windows and Linux. You can use them remotely over SSH connections, and they can survive disconects (within tmux). No VNC, or X11 forwarding needed. They take less memory. compare vscode vs nvim. Super fast to launch. They can integrate with other TUIs and shell apps, shell-scripts, pipes and lastly they do not contain Ads. lol", "context": "uses TUIs across Mac, Windows and Linux", "use_case": "editing in terminal", "switched_from": "", "story": "Stop Making TUIs"}, {"id": 767201088, "item_id": 47950068, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47950068", "by": "submeta", "date": "2026-04-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "NeoVim gives me everything I was looking for in Zed: Speed, a polished UI, quick startup, not overloaded.", "excerpt": "Zed is a very polished and nice product. I tried hard to use it, especially when I decided to migrate away from Emacs. But NeoVim gives me everything I was looking for in Zed: Speed, a polished UI, quick startup, not overloaded. So between Zed and NeoVim I decided for the latter. I use Neovide in GUI and neovim in terminal. I don\u2019t use AI alongside nvim, but claude code helps me configure my config file in lua. So my", "context": "", "use_case": "coding, journaling, documentation", "switched_from": "Emacs", "story": "Zed is 1.0"}, {"id": 797882880, "item_id": 49867680, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49867680", "by": "WesolyKubeczek", "date": "2026-09-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I used neovim because it felt way faster by default.", "excerpt": "I used neovim because it felt way faster by default. I think treesitter runs circles around what classic vim is using to highlight syntax. That said, I never used both beyond basics, thus no horror stories either.", "context": "", "use_case": "code editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "On caring for user data: NeoVim caused Vim undo files to be deleted"}, {"id": 768034817, "item_id": 48002176, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48002176", "by": "samgranieri", "date": "2026-05-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I spend all day in a terminal multiplexer (zellij) with neovim and other splits.", "excerpt": "I spend all day in a terminal multiplexer (zellij) with neovim and other splits. Using things like k9s / btop / lazygit / lazydocker helm / stern / whatever that systemd TUI I saw in here and started and will check out later just keeps me focused in one window, and that\u2019s pretty cool", "context": "", "use_case": "editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why TUIs Are Back"}]}, {"text": " with LSP, Treesitter and Lua extensibility", "cites": [{"id": 772902864, "item_id": 48306429, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48306429", "by": "ku1ik", "date": "2026-05-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Neovim really gave it a new life - LSPs, Treesitter, scripting with Lua", "excerpt": "Similar story here. Before vim I used Kate, Gedit, Eclipse, JEdit and NetBeans IDE. Got into vim in 2009 and since then it's the editor I always come back to. Neovim really gave it a new life - LSPs, Treesitter, scripting with Lua (which I suck at) and many more. Over last 15 years I had shorter and longer periods where I tried/used something else (VS Code, Emacs/Spacemacs, helix) but it's always been vim/neovim. I d", "context": "long-time vim user since 2009", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "A Love Letter to Neovim"}, {"id": 767908144, "item_id": 47994259, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47994259", "by": "adamddev1", "date": "2026-05-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'm so glad I switched to NeoVim. I've got the good LSP and auto-complete stuff", "excerpt": "I'm so glad I switched to NeoVim. I've got the good LSP and auto-complete stuff, a nicer grepping experience, semantic moving and selecting with treesitter textobjects, and absolutely ZERO LLM AI stuff. (I still use LLMs outside my editor for some searching and questions, but may try to cut that down too.) Call me a Luddite, but we are up against something extra insidious with this new AI wave, and the cracks of the ", "context": "", "use_case": "code editor without AI", "switched_from": "VS Code", "story": "VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage"}, {"id": 753472256, "item_id": 47092016, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47092016", "by": "ativzzz", "date": "2026-02-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'm fully onboard the Neovim train. Lua is a much better language than vimscript", "excerpt": "I'm fully onboard the Neovim train. Lua is a much better language than vimscript and there's a lot more interest in Neovim so there's more interesting packages that people create. Regular Vim is probably fine if you aren't gonna put as much effort into customizing it and if you just stick to the tried and true. I use nvim all the time for code exploration & figuring out what i need to tell the AI. Invest in tools and", "context": "", "use_case": "code exploration", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Is it worth learning Vim in 2026?"}]}, {"text": ", and it pairs well with AI coding agents.", "cites": [{"id": 782224288, "item_id": 48889018, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48889018", "by": "rafaelnexus", "date": "2026-07-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use only Neovim, and paired with CodeCompanion it is really powerful and ergonomic", "excerpt": "I use only Neovim, and paired with CodeCompanion it is really powerful and ergonomic, way more them combining external harnesses. At least for me.", "context": "", "use_case": "editor with AI", "switched_from": "", "story": "How do you use Vim in the era of AI?"}, {"id": 781913360, "item_id": 48869585, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48869585", "by": "rstagi", "date": "2026-07-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "neovim + claude code + open terminal is exactly my setup!", "excerpt": "neovim + claude code + open terminal is exactly my setup! But all the heavy lifting I used to do simply I\u2019m not doing it anymore. I spend most of the time creating new worktrees and reviewing code, and I guess I\u2019m just not interested about the implementation details that much (not that I don\u2019t look at the code, but minor styling things I just ignore them right now) I\u2019m transitioning to this new way of work btw, so I ", "context": "", "use_case": "editor in AI workflow", "switched_from": "", "story": "How do you use Vim in the era of AI?"}, {"id": 786175089, "item_id": 49135943, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49135943", "by": "leonvoss", "date": "2026-08-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I moved to Neovim which has barely any efficiency downside anymore", "excerpt": "I don't think it offers any. I got tired of switching between Codex and Claude plus I wanted to start using glm and kimi so I switch to pi. Then I got tired of VSCode eating up battery and RAM so I moved to Neovim which has barely any efficiency downside anymore since most code is not written by hand and if you know how to use it well it was only maybe 10% less efficient than VSCode to begin with. I am not sure why a", "context": "", "use_case": "code editor", "switched_from": "VS Code", "story": "Cursor removed cost information from the usage page and CSV export"}]}, {"text": " The most common complaint is a fragile setup, where plugin changes and updates break configurations", "cites": [{"id": 756653265, "item_id": 47290829, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47290829", "by": "debois", "date": "2026-03-07", "stance": "warn", "quote": "plugins and updates kept breaking it", "excerpt": "I switched from neovim because plugins and updates kept breaking it, and I never really did feel like I was in control of it anyway. Helix does what it does, no fuzz. Never breaks. You do start to think \u201ccan I get helix keybindings in my shell\u201d, though.", "context": "", "use_case": "text editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Helix: A post-modern text editor"}, {"id": 785726097, "item_id": 49107881, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49107881", "by": "DrewADesign", "date": "2026-07-30", "stance": "warn", "quote": "it was fragile, and while it was theoretically infinitely flexible, practically, it was too big of a PITA to change", "excerpt": "It\u2019s a balance. It\u2019s easy to spend more time dickering with tools than you save by having those tools. I used to have this amazing neovim setup that worked exactly like I wanted it to. Unfortunately, it was fragile, and while it was theoretically infinitely flexible, practically, it was too big of a PITA to change to be flexible on the run. Then a couple of unrelated plugin changes caused some big problems with my se", "context": "", "use_case": "code editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Productivity Mirage"}, {"id": 804379440, "item_id": 50273715, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50273715", "by": "vr46", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I ditched Neovim as all the complicated modern crap wasn't working for me", "excerpt": "About two or three months ago I ditched Neovim as all the complicated modern crap wasn't working for me, and instead of reverting to Vim, I switched to Emacs and Doom + eVil, and am relieved to be back in a nice stable system again. I did ask GPT to port over my key commands and shortcuts, which it did, and things are great again!", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}]}, {"text": " and the ecosystem keeps reinventing itself.", "cites": [{"id": 776595264, "item_id": 48537204, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48537204", "by": "rjzzleep", "date": "2026-06-14", "stance": "warn", "quote": "LSPs keep getting reimplemented, package managers keep getting reimplemented. It's a bit like the react version of text editors.", "excerpt": "LSPs keep getting reimplemented, package managers keep getting reimplemented. It's a bit like the react version of text editors. I used it more than I use emacs, but I agree with the assessment of doom emacs vs neovim.", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Even More Batteries Included with Emacs"}, {"id": 760315393, "item_id": 47519712, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47519712", "by": "roryrjb", "date": "2026-03-25", "stance": "warn", "quote": "a large section of the community want to create more complex TUI elements or replicate GUI interfaces and make it more like VS Code", "excerpt": "I think I will use vim-classic and possibly contribute to it. Not because of AI, but because I actually want to use Vim over say something like Neovim* and I actually like vimscript, which imo didn't need the development of vim9script to improve it. Regarding why not Neovim, I think it's because a large section of the community want to create more complex TUI elements or replicate GUI interfaces and make it more like", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "A Eulogy for Vim"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Terminal workflow", "summary": "Fits a keyboard-driven terminal setup alongside tmux, zellij, lazygit and other TUIs.", "quotes": [{"id": 768034817, "item_id": 48002176, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48002176", "by": "samgranieri", "date": "2026-05-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I spend all day in a terminal multiplexer (zellij) with neovim and other splits.", "excerpt": "I spend all day in a terminal multiplexer (zellij) with neovim and other splits. Using things like k9s / btop / lazygit / lazydocker helm / stern / whatever that systemd TUI I saw in here and started and will check out later just keeps me focused in one window, and that\u2019s pretty cool", "context": "", "use_case": "editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why TUIs Are Back"}, {"id": 762007841, "item_id": 47625490, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47625490", "by": "nocobot", "date": "2026-04-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "inside the session using nvim for edits", "excerpt": "i use tmux with one open session per project I'm working on. inside the session using nvim for edits, terminal panes for running tests / commands etc, and increasingly pi as a coding agent instead of claude code. i sometimes toy around with orchestration projects like capy.ai or conductor but haven't really been impressed. probably worth noting that usually all code i push will have been written by me. even if LLMs c", "context": "", "use_case": "code editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What is your dev set up like?"}, {"id": 790415973, "item_id": 49400998, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49400998", "by": "folkrav", "date": "2026-08-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "neovim as a text editor", "excerpt": "Not OP but, I regularly use : - yazi as a file explorer - lazygit for git - tmux/zellij as multiplexers - fzf left and right for a bunch of utils (terminal history, switching between projects in zellij/tmux when working in multi-project workspaces, etc) - neovim as a text editor - glow for markdown reading - currently on pi for my home harness, CC at work I'm probably missing a few but those are the ones I use more o", "context": "", "use_case": "text editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Stop Making TUIs"}]}, {"label": "AI agent pairing", "summary": "Commenters pair it with Claude Code, CodeCompanion or pi to review and steer AI-written code.", "quotes": [{"id": 782224288, "item_id": 48889018, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48889018", "by": "rafaelnexus", "date": "2026-07-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use only Neovim, and paired with CodeCompanion it is really powerful and ergonomic", "excerpt": "I use only Neovim, and paired with CodeCompanion it is really powerful and ergonomic, way more them combining external harnesses. At least for me.", "context": "", "use_case": "editor with AI", "switched_from": "", "story": "How do you use Vim in the era of AI?"}, {"id": 781913360, "item_id": 48869585, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48869585", "by": "rstagi", "date": "2026-07-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "neovim + claude code + open terminal is exactly my setup!", "excerpt": "neovim + claude code + open terminal is exactly my setup! But all the heavy lifting I used to do simply I\u2019m not doing it anymore. I spend most of the time creating new worktrees and reviewing code, and I guess I\u2019m just not interested about the implementation details that much (not that I don\u2019t look at the code, but minor styling things I just ignore them right now) I\u2019m transitioning to this new way of work btw, so I ", "context": "", "use_case": "editor in AI workflow", "switched_from": "", "story": "How do you use Vim in the era of AI?"}, {"id": 753472256, "item_id": 47092016, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47092016", "by": "ativzzz", "date": "2026-02-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'm fully onboard the Neovim train. Lua is a much better language than vimscript", "excerpt": "I'm fully onboard the Neovim train. Lua is a much better language than vimscript and there's a lot more interest in Neovim so there's more interesting packages that people create. Regular Vim is probably fine if you aren't gonna put as much effort into customizing it and if you just stick to the tried and true. I use nvim all the time for code exploration & figuring out what i need to tell the AI. Invest in tools and", "context": "", "use_case": "code exploration", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Is it worth learning Vim in 2026?"}]}, {"label": "LazyVim distribution", "summary": "LazyVim makes it an IDE out of the box with little configuration.", "quotes": [{"id": 769896193, "item_id": 48118512, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48118512", "by": "rmunn", "date": "2026-05-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'm probably 2x to 3x as productive in vim (nvim, now) as before.", "excerpt": "I never edited the default config much. But then I discovered https://www.lazyvim.org/. Turns your copy of NeoVim into an IDE. I still haven't edited the default config much, actually. But now I'm probably 2x to 3x as productive in vim (nvim, now) as before. P.S. If you decide to check out the LazyVim config, I highly recommend reading https://lazyvim-ambitious-devs.phillips.codes/ all the way through. There's a lot ", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "Vim", "story": "The vi family"}, {"id": 800496865, "item_id": 50031054, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50031054", "by": "rmunn", "date": "2026-10-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "But NeoVim has made writing plugins so much easier", "excerpt": "Emacs is definitely more full-featured than plain vim. But for me, I wouldn't be switching to it from plain vim, I'd be switching to it from a LazyVim setup. Which I've barely had to configure: it's an IDE straight out of the box. And to get that IDE setup back in Emacs, I'd have to learn which Emacs plugins do what, reconfigure several plugins' default keystrokes to match what LazyVim did because those are in my mus", "context": "", "use_case": "editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "I tried to move my notes out of Emacs. I failed. Again"}, {"id": 761055441, "item_id": 47565965, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47565965", "by": "johnsonjo", "date": "2026-03-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've been using VIM/NVIM on and off for a while", "excerpt": "I've been using VIM/NVIM on and off for a while and the one thing that made it stick for me over VSCode was LazyVim [1]. If you're missing out on something IDE like VSCode, but you love vim it's a great way to go (it can take some getting used to so hang in there). EDIT LazyVim is based off nvim by the way. If your more into videos to learn about something this is a good intro to it from Elijah Manor [2]. I have my d", "context": "", "use_case": "code editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Neovim 0.12.0"}]}, {"label": "Modern features", "summary": "LSP, Treesitter and Lua scripting gave Vim new life compared with vimscript.", "quotes": [{"id": 772902864, "item_id": 48306429, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48306429", "by": "ku1ik", "date": "2026-05-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Neovim really gave it a new life - LSPs, Treesitter, scripting with Lua", "excerpt": "Similar story here. Before vim I used Kate, Gedit, Eclipse, JEdit and NetBeans IDE. Got into vim in 2009 and since then it's the editor I always come back to. Neovim really gave it a new life - LSPs, Treesitter, scripting with Lua (which I suck at) and many more. Over last 15 years I had shorter and longer periods where I tried/used something else (VS Code, Emacs/Spacemacs, helix) but it's always been vim/neovim. I d", "context": "long-time vim user since 2009", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "A Love Letter to Neovim"}, {"id": 767908144, "item_id": 47994259, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47994259", "by": "adamddev1", "date": "2026-05-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'm so glad I switched to NeoVim. I've got the good LSP and auto-complete stuff", "excerpt": "I'm so glad I switched to NeoVim. I've got the good LSP and auto-complete stuff, a nicer grepping experience, semantic moving and selecting with treesitter textobjects, and absolutely ZERO LLM AI stuff. (I still use LLMs outside my editor for some searching and questions, but may try to cut that down too.) Call me a Luddite, but we are up against something extra insidious with this new AI wave, and the cracks of the ", "context": "", "use_case": "code editor without AI", "switched_from": "VS Code", "story": "VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage"}, {"id": 753472256, "item_id": 47092016, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47092016", "by": "ativzzz", "date": "2026-02-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'm fully onboard the Neovim train. Lua is a much better language than vimscript", "excerpt": "I'm fully onboard the Neovim train. Lua is a much better language than vimscript and there's a lot more interest in Neovim so there's more interesting packages that people create. Regular Vim is probably fine if you aren't gonna put as much effort into customizing it and if you just stick to the tried and true. I use nvim all the time for code exploration & figuring out what i need to tell the AI. Invest in tools and", "context": "", "use_case": "code exploration", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Is it worth learning Vim in 2026?"}]}, {"label": "Speed and lightness", "summary": "Starts quickly and uses less memory and battery than VS Code.", "quotes": [{"id": 790407392, "item_id": 49400462, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49400462", "by": "israrkhan", "date": "2026-08-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "They take less memory. compare vscode vs nvim.", "excerpt": "TUIs, work on several operating systems. I use same set of apps across Mac, windows and Linux. You can use them remotely over SSH connections, and they can survive disconects (within tmux). No VNC, or X11 forwarding needed. They take less memory. compare vscode vs nvim. Super fast to launch. They can integrate with other TUIs and shell apps, shell-scripts, pipes and lastly they do not contain Ads. lol", "context": "uses TUIs across Mac, Windows and Linux", "use_case": "editing in terminal", "switched_from": "", "story": "Stop Making TUIs"}, {"id": 786175089, "item_id": 49135943, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49135943", "by": "leonvoss", "date": "2026-08-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I moved to Neovim which has barely any efficiency downside anymore", "excerpt": "I don't think it offers any. I got tired of switching between Codex and Claude plus I wanted to start using glm and kimi so I switch to pi. Then I got tired of VSCode eating up battery and RAM so I moved to Neovim which has barely any efficiency downside anymore since most code is not written by hand and if you know how to use it well it was only maybe 10% less efficient than VSCode to begin with. I am not sure why a", "context": "", "use_case": "code editor", "switched_from": "VS Code", "story": "Cursor removed cost information from the usage page and CSV export"}, {"id": 767201088, "item_id": 47950068, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47950068", "by": "submeta", "date": "2026-04-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "NeoVim gives me everything I was looking for in Zed: Speed, a polished UI, quick startup, not overloaded.", "excerpt": "Zed is a very polished and nice product. I tried hard to use it, especially when I decided to migrate away from Emacs. But NeoVim gives me everything I was looking for in Zed: Speed, a polished UI, quick startup, not overloaded. So between Zed and NeoVim I decided for the latter. I use Neovide in GUI and neovim in terminal. I don\u2019t use AI alongside nvim, but claude code helps me configure my config file in lua. So my", "context": "", "use_case": "coding, journaling, documentation", "switched_from": "Emacs", "story": "Zed is 1.0"}]}, {"label": "Extensibility", "summary": "Users shape it over time to match their own workflow and write their own plugin versions.", "quotes": [{"id": 767373632, "item_id": 47960852, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47960852", "by": "bahadiraydin", "date": "2026-04-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Neovim is simple but extensible. I have designed it over years to match my workflow and tools precisely.", "excerpt": "Today, I tried Zed because it made it to frontpage of HN and a lot of people were praising it in comments. However, I got lost. Every IDE is different. I felt very restricted. This is not the problem of Zed (or any IDE) but this is how they are compared to hand-crafted Neovim installation. They just can't compare. Neovim is simple but extensible. I have designed it over years to match my workflow and tools precisely.", "context": "terminal-centric developer", "use_case": "main editor in terminal", "switched_from": "", "story": "Make HN great again: Neovim vs. IDEs"}, {"id": 769951424, "item_id": 48121964, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48121964", "by": "simoesd", "date": "2026-05-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I can try put someone's neovim plugin for a second, figure out if it's something I actually need, and if so make my own personal version", "excerpt": "I know the article is mostly about making stand-alone software, but this type of thing is why one of the things I value most when looking workflow tools I will be using heavily is extensibility. I can try put someone's neovim plugin for a second, figure out if it's something I actually need, and if so make my own personal version that matches my mental model perfectly, adds all the dumb little bells I want, and remov", "context": "", "use_case": "extensible editor workflow", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Emacsification of Software"}, {"id": 767201088, "item_id": 47950068, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47950068", "by": "submeta", "date": "2026-04-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "NeoVim gives me everything I was looking for in Zed: Speed, a polished UI, quick startup, not overloaded.", "excerpt": "Zed is a very polished and nice product. I tried hard to use it, especially when I decided to migrate away from Emacs. But NeoVim gives me everything I was looking for in Zed: Speed, a polished UI, quick startup, not overloaded. So between Zed and NeoVim I decided for the latter. I use Neovide in GUI and neovim in terminal. I don\u2019t use AI alongside nvim, but claude code helps me configure my config file in lua. So my", "context": "", "use_case": "coding, journaling, documentation", "switched_from": "Emacs", "story": "Zed is 1.0"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "Fragile configs", "summary": "Plugin changes and updates broke setups, and some users left for Helix, JetBrains or Doom Emacs.", "quotes": [{"id": 756653265, "item_id": 47290829, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47290829", "by": "debois", "date": "2026-03-07", "stance": "warn", "quote": "plugins and updates kept breaking it", "excerpt": "I switched from neovim because plugins and updates kept breaking it, and I never really did feel like I was in control of it anyway. Helix does what it does, no fuzz. Never breaks. You do start to think \u201ccan I get helix keybindings in my shell\u201d, though.", "context": "", "use_case": "text editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Helix: A post-modern text editor"}, {"id": 785726097, "item_id": 49107881, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49107881", "by": "DrewADesign", "date": "2026-07-30", "stance": "warn", "quote": "it was fragile, and while it was theoretically infinitely flexible, practically, it was too big of a PITA to change", "excerpt": "It\u2019s a balance. It\u2019s easy to spend more time dickering with tools than you save by having those tools. I used to have this amazing neovim setup that worked exactly like I wanted it to. Unfortunately, it was fragile, and while it was theoretically infinitely flexible, practically, it was too big of a PITA to change to be flexible on the run. Then a couple of unrelated plugin changes caused some big problems with my se", "context": "", "use_case": "code editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Productivity Mirage"}, {"id": 804379440, "item_id": 50273715, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50273715", "by": "vr46", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I ditched Neovim as all the complicated modern crap wasn't working for me", "excerpt": "About two or three months ago I ditched Neovim as all the complicated modern crap wasn't working for me, and instead of reverting to Vim, I switched to Emacs and Doom + eVil, and am relieved to be back in a nice stable system again. I did ask GPT to port over my key commands and shortcuts, which it did, and things are great again!", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}]}, {"label": "Ecosystem churn", "summary": "LSPs and package managers keep getting reimplemented, and some find the community pushes toward VS Code-like complexity.", "quotes": [{"id": 776595264, "item_id": 48537204, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48537204", "by": "rjzzleep", "date": "2026-06-14", "stance": "warn", "quote": "LSPs keep getting reimplemented, package managers keep getting reimplemented. It's a bit like the react version of text editors.", "excerpt": "LSPs keep getting reimplemented, package managers keep getting reimplemented. It's a bit like the react version of text editors. I used it more than I use emacs, but I agree with the assessment of doom emacs vs neovim.", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Even More Batteries Included with Emacs"}, {"id": 760315393, "item_id": 47519712, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47519712", "by": "roryrjb", "date": "2026-03-25", "stance": "warn", "quote": "a large section of the community want to create more complex TUI elements or replicate GUI interfaces and make it more like VS Code", "excerpt": "I think I will use vim-classic and possibly contribute to it. Not because of AI, but because I actually want to use Vim over say something like Neovim* and I actually like vimscript, which imo didn't need the development of vim9script to improve it. Regarding why not Neovim, I think it's because a large section of the community want to create more complex TUI elements or replicate GUI interfaces and make it more like", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "A Eulogy for Vim"}]}, {"label": "Vim feature gaps", "summary": "Vim users were caught off guard by an incident involving a Vim feature (persistent undo) behaving differently in Neovim.", "quotes": [{"id": 797881889, "item_id": 49867618, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49867618", "by": "sdcfgy", "date": "2026-09-27", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Feeling terribly vindicated at this point", "excerpt": "I've used vim since the first time it appeared in Debian repos. I have been told a thousand times that NeoVim is better, more modern and solves many (conveniently never cited) issues. I just ignored it and carried on. Feeling terribly vindicated at this point as it's a feature I use regularly and have no idea that it would be an issue in NeoVim.", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "On caring for user data: NeoVim caused Vim undo files to be deleted"}, {"id": 797894576, "item_id": 49868411, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49868411", "by": "Insanity", "date": "2026-09-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I switched from Vim to NeoVim this year, after about 15 years on Vim.", "excerpt": "I switched from Vim to NeoVim this year, after about 15 years on Vim. Not withstanding this incident, I would say that on the whole it has been a good experience with Neovim. (I didn\u2019t actually ever use the persistent undo functionality in vim. Guess because of VCS it\u2019s less needed for my use-case).", "context": "15-year Vim user", "use_case": "code editing", "switched_from": "Vim", "story": "On caring for user data: NeoVim caused Vim undo files to be deleted"}]}, {"label": "Config maintenance", "summary": "Even long-time fans don't enjoy maintaining their configuration.", "quotes": [{"id": 772902864, "item_id": 48306429, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48306429", "by": "ku1ik", "date": "2026-05-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Neovim really gave it a new life - LSPs, Treesitter, scripting with Lua", "excerpt": "Similar story here. Before vim I used Kate, Gedit, Eclipse, JEdit and NetBeans IDE. Got into vim in 2009 and since then it's the editor I always come back to. Neovim really gave it a new life - LSPs, Treesitter, scripting with Lua (which I suck at) and many more. Over last 15 years I had shorter and longer periods where I tried/used something else (VS Code, Emacs/Spacemacs, helix) but it's always been vim/neovim. I d", "context": "long-time vim user since 2009", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "A Love Letter to Neovim"}]}, {"label": "macOS keybindings", "summary": "One user gave up because they couldn't bind the CMD key properly.", "quotes": [{"id": 786532816, "item_id": 49158301, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49158301", "by": "mrwaip", "date": "2026-08-03", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I once gave up on NeoVim because I couldn't bind the CMD key properly and switched to VS Code.", "excerpt": "I once gave up on NeoVim because I couldn't bind the CMD key properly and switched to VS Code. Can I do that here?", "context": "", "use_case": "code editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Shitty \u2013 fast terminal. Memory-unsafe and faster than yours"}]}], "who": [{"by": "otherayden", "context": "neovim power user for a few years", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50161852", "date": "2026-10-20"}, {"by": "ryanscript01123", "context": "senior full stack developer", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49997495", "date": "2026-10-07"}, {"by": "nozzlegear", "context": "F# developer", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49983206", "date": "2026-10-06"}, {"by": "thayne", "context": "former Emacs user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49940658", "date": "2026-10-03"}, {"by": "Insanity", "context": "15-year Vim user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49868411", "date": "2026-09-27"}, {"by": "godelski", "context": "power user who lives in the terminal", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49483236", "date": "2026-08-28"}, {"by": "israrkhan", "context": "uses TUIs across Mac, Windows and Linux", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49400462", "date": "2026-08-22"}, {"by": "chadash", "context": "works mostly on remote servers", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48859951", "date": "2026-07-10"}, {"by": "kristjansson", "context": "long-time Emacs and Vim user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48586713", "date": "2026-06-18"}, {"by": "mjrbrennan", "context": "works at Discourse", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48564945", "date": "2026-06-16"}, {"by": "techman001", "context": "embedded programmer", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48458942", "date": "2026-06-09"}, {"by": "ku1ik", "context": "long-time vim user since 2009", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48306429", "date": "2026-05-28"}], "tags": ["for terminal users", "for remote/SSH work", "for Vim users", "for AI-assisted coding", "cross-platform"], "use_cases": ["code editing", "text editing", "editor", "editing", "text editor", "code editor"], "compared": [{"slug": "vim", "name": "Vim", "co": 26, "switched_from": 7, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "visual-studio-code", "name": "Visual Studio Code", "co": 27, "switched_from": 6, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "emacs", "name": "Emacs", "co": 30, "switched_from": 3, "switched_to": 2}, {"slug": "claude-code", "name": "Claude Code", "co": 16, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "zed", "name": "Zed", "co": 12, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "tmux", "name": "tmux", "co": 15, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "doom-emacs", "name": "Doom Emacs", "co": 5, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 3}, {"slug": "helix", "name": "Helix", "co": 7, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 2}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49867067", "title": "On caring for user data: NeoVim caused Vim undo files to be deleted", "mentions": 7}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48535886", "title": "Even More Batteries Included with Emacs", "mentions": 4}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48859439", "title": "How do you use Vim in the era of AI?", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48449187", "title": "Ask HN: What are tools you have made for yourself since the advent of AI", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48413629", "title": "Ask HN: What is your (AI) dev tech stack / workflow? (June 2026)", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48033483", "title": "The vi family", "mentions": 3}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"neutral": 7, "recommend": 1}, "2025-12": {"neutral": 4, "recommend": 3}, "2026-01": {"neutral": 4, "recommend": 5}, "2026-02": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 3}, "2026-03": {"recommend": 5, "warn": 2}, "2026-04": {"neutral": 3, "recommend": 3}, "2026-05": {"recommend": 10, "compare": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-06": {"recommend": 7, "neutral": 13, "warn": 1}, "2026-07": {"recommend": 8, "neutral": 5, "compare": 1, "warn": 1}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 7, "warn": 1, "neutral": 5}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 6, "neutral": 3, "warn": 1, "compare": 1}, "2026-10": {"recommend": 5, "neutral": 10, "compare": 1, "warn": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 804907764, "item_id": 50306735, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50306735", "by": "stryan", "date": "2026-10-30", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "while setting up Neovim on a new machine", "excerpt": "Really looking forward to seeing Tangled develop! I've got a side project that's main repo and CI is on my self-hosted Gitea but code and releases are mirrored to Github; I'm hoping to move it off Gitea and onto Tangled for code/releases/potentially CI and just keep Github for discoverability/backups/namespace \"squatting\". Just need git-bug to add a Tangled bridge so I can keep issues synced and (ideally) for there t", "context": "", "use_case": "code editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "The federated code forge"}, {"id": 804379440, "item_id": 50273715, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50273715", "by": "vr46", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I ditched Neovim as all the complicated modern crap wasn't working for me", "excerpt": "About two or three months ago I ditched Neovim as all the complicated modern crap wasn't working for me, and instead of reverting to Vim, I switched to Emacs and Doom + eVil, and am relieved to be back in a nice stable system again. I did ask GPT to port over my key commands and shortcuts, which it did, and things are great again!", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Emacs Turns 50"}, {"id": 804287442, "item_id": 50267965, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50267965", "by": "kombine", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "when I was transitioning to neovim", "excerpt": "Oh Konsole while great (efficient and feature-rich) is showing its age and has a bit of a widget bloat and an unwieldy configuration system. For that reason I switched to Kitty a couple of years ago when I was transitioning to neovim I'm have not looked back since. This looks like a great opportunity for the KDE project to rethink its terminal application for the modern age. Text-based config would be amazing though ", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 803757889, "item_id": 50234868, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50234868", "by": "bluepoint", "date": "2026-10-25", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Will it replace neovim for me?", "excerpt": "I never heard of it. It says that it is a fork of lite cl, which is a fork of lite, but they are not driven by minimalist ideology. And they pose as an alternative to vscode without the webbrowser. Will it replace neovim for me? Let\u2019s see.", "context": "", "use_case": "text editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pragtical v3.14 Lua-based text editor adds menus, floating views, and sessions"}, {"id": 802589632, "item_id": 50161852, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50161852", "by": "otherayden", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I have been a neovim power user for a few years now", "excerpt": "How often do you manually edit text files these days? I have been a neovim power user for a few years now but I find that I almost never open it anymore since I use agents for most code.", "context": "neovim power user for a few years", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What's your SSH terminal workflow like?"}, {"id": 802580802, "item_id": 50161300, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50161300", "by": "SurfingAlpaca", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "compare", "quote": "I switch to nvim/helix (still evaluating both. Don\u2019t know what to pick)", "excerpt": "Back in the day I used to do ssh, tmux, vim for most of my work on the server and sshfs for stuff where I needed my IDE. In the last 10 years I think the only thing thats changed is adding agents to the mix (and no longer needing sshfs). Some files kinda open slow on vim or screw up the syntax highlighting so I switch to nvim/helix (still evaluating both. Don\u2019t know what to pick)", "context": "", "use_case": "editing files with syntax highlighting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What's your SSH terminal workflow like?"}, {"id": 802536176, "item_id": 50158511, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50158511", "by": "olivewong", "date": "2026-10-19", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use nvim as my terminal (via lazy vim guy's terminal plugin)", "excerpt": "honestly, I use nvim as my terminal (via lazy vim guy's terminal plugin), and I wish that there was a better way to vibe code in just nvim without having to leave it. I have tried to learn tmux, but the key bindings are really unintuitive to me vs my familiar vim setup", "context": "", "use_case": "editor and terminal", "switched_from": "", "story": "Tmux and Claude Code: Sessions, Send-Keys, and the Ceiling"}, {"id": 802448530, "item_id": 50153033, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50153033", "by": "wb14123", "date": "2026-10-19", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "to leverage tmux and neovim", "excerpt": "I created my own harness tcode (https://github.com/wb14123/tcode) to leverage tmux and neovim. Have been using it all the time since the beginning of this year.", "context": "", "use_case": "harness foundation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Tmux and Claude Code: Sessions, Send-Keys, and the Ceiling"}, {"id": 801661474, "item_id": 50103842, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50103842", "by": "jrop", "date": "2026-10-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Every Neovim install already has a grid, extmarks, floating windows, and a Lua runtime.", "excerpt": "Congrats on the release! This looks cool. Since you mentioned you're Neovim nerds: you may enjoy this: I build a declarative rendering engine on top of Neovim itself: morph.nvim [1]. Every Neovim install already has a grid, extmarks, floating windows, and a Lua runtime. On top of morph, I've dog-fooded 14+ interactive TUI applets -- docker, k8s, systemd, AWS, GitHub, HN reader [2]. Aside from declarative rendering, m", "context": "", "use_case": "platform for TUI apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Ito \u2013 Build Terminal UIs in Lua"}, {"id": 800671393, "item_id": 50041962, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50041962", "by": "RandomGerm4n", "date": "2026-10-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "There are also alternatives such as VSCodium, Neovim, or Emacs.", "excerpt": "I wish lists like this were curated more carefully. Just because a company is European doesn't automatically make it better. For example, Gigaset is listed as one of the alternatives to the iPhone. They distributed malware to end users via their official update servers and then failed to inform them about it. Something like this should be an absolute no go for a smartphone manufacturer unless it's properly addressed.", "context": "", "use_case": "code editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "European Alternatives"}, {"id": 800622657, "item_id": 50038916, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50038916", "by": "jeremyjh", "date": "2026-10-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I also went back to using neovim and tmux", "excerpt": "I think that ratio is possible, and certainly I\u2019m counted among those numbers. However, it is not so much the case that I longed to use Nix and agents made it more feasible. What happened is that I wanted an agent to manage my machine\u2019s configuration without giving it much access. It\u2019s not the only thing that agents have changed for me - I also went back to using neovim and tmux; partly because of how I use remote de", "context": "", "use_case": "editor on remote dev servers", "switched_from": "", "story": "Nix wrote half of my debugger"}, {"id": 800555280, "item_id": 50034705, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50034705", "by": "himata4113", "date": "2026-10-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Also AI got me off jetbrains onto nvim and I haven't been this happy writing code.", "excerpt": "Following some of the comments about switching to linux the big one that enabled it for me is AI. I love to thinker, but sometimes I just want things to work and linux is known for very minor inconveniences that are pain to alter because you have to learn what kind of god forsaken build system the application uses and how it integrates with the desktop environment, but now I can just ask AI and it will be fixed by th", "context": "", "use_case": "writing code", "switched_from": "JetBrains", "story": "WSL3 Performance is about 5-60% faster than WSL2 depending on the workload"}, {"id": 800496865, "item_id": 50031054, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50031054", "by": "rmunn", "date": "2026-10-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "But NeoVim has made writing plugins so much easier", "excerpt": "Emacs is definitely more full-featured than plain vim. But for me, I wouldn't be switching to it from plain vim, I'd be switching to it from a LazyVim setup. Which I've barely had to configure: it's an IDE straight out of the box. And to get that IDE setup back in Emacs, I'd have to learn which Emacs plugins do what, reconfigure several plugins' default keystrokes to match what LazyVim did because those are in my mus", "context": "", "use_case": "editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "I tried to move my notes out of Emacs. I failed. Again"}, {"id": 800493747, "item_id": 50030859, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50030859", "by": "rmunn", "date": "2026-10-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "But for org-mode in Neovim", "excerpt": "The two things about Emacs I would love if I used it (tried twice, bounced HARD off the keyboard controls both times. I hate modifer+key control schemes \u2014 give me modal editing any day \u2014 and I don't even have RSI!) are magit and org-mode. I've never tried magit so I don't know if lazygit is a decent substitute. But for org-mode in Neovim, there's https://github.com/nvim-neorg/neorg. I'm sure it's only a partial, half", "context": "", "use_case": "editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "I tried to move my notes out of Emacs. I failed. Again"}, {"id": 800270273, "item_id": 50016892, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50016892", "by": "sigbottle", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "neovim already has neovide", "excerpt": "How hard do you think it would be to rewrite a large subset of userspace tools to codesign with a completely new terminal protocol? I feel like in the age of personal computing, this should be possible and would be nice if it were possible. Nushell already kind of has this philosophy - there is a separation between the actually scripting of tools (prints out structured json), and the visualization back to the user if", "context": "", "use_case": "editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "A Terminal Protocol for Program Status (OSC 7501)"}, {"id": 799959920, "item_id": 49997495, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49997495", "by": "ryanscript01123", "date": "2026-10-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "having a blast improving my workflow with Neovim and Agentic Engineering", "excerpt": "Location: Minneapolis, MN, USA Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: No Technologies: TypeScript, JavaScript, React, Vue, Svelte, Golang, Node, Python, FastAPI, Django, PHP, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Claude, AWS, Terraform, Docker, CI/CD, Git, HTML, CSS, Tailwind, Jest, Mapbox, ArcGIS, Bash, Linux R\u00e9sum\u00e9/CV: https://ryanisler.com/resume Email: islerryan@gmail.com Portfolio: https://github.com/ryanIs Senior Full Stack Developer", "context": "senior full stack developer", "use_case": "code editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (October 2026)"}, {"id": 799731297, "item_id": 49983206, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49983206", "by": "nozzlegear", "date": "2026-10-06", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I finally got around to using AI to configure my Neovim setup with a decent F# and C# experience.", "excerpt": "I canceled my DotNet Ultimate subscription (or whatever it's called) earlier this year, even though Rider is (was) one of the best IDEs for my main squeeze, F#. It's not because I don't use Rider or IDEs, but because I've felt the quality has gone downhill ever since I first started paying for it. What broke the camel's back was the constant surveys they were sending me surveys asking how much I love AI in Rider, and", "context": "F# developer", "use_case": "F# and C# editing", "switched_from": "Rider", "story": "JetBrains reports revenue growth, net financial loss for 2025"}, {"id": 799050528, "item_id": 49940658, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49940658", "by": "thayne", "date": "2026-10-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "neovim is my preferred editor now", "excerpt": "> The reason being that Orgmode is a far superior format [to markdown] I have to disagree with this. I will admit there are some things org mode does better than markdown, but there are also things it does worse. And probably the biggest is alluded to in the rest of that sentence: \"[the] only downside is that you have to be inside Emacs to fully enjoy.\" A while ago, I read a blog post about how orgmode was better tha", "context": "former Emacs user", "use_case": "editing", "switched_from": "Emacs", "story": "Blogging with Gleam, Org-Mode and Pandoc"}, {"id": 797926496, "item_id": 49870406, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49870406", "by": "tombert", "date": "2026-09-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The reason I switched to NeoVim in like 2015 is because it had async plugin support.", "excerpt": "Vim is good enough now. The reason I switched to NeoVim in like 2015 is because it had async plugin support. With vanilla Vim at the time, if you had a lot of plugins it could get pretty slow and stuttery pretty quickly. Vanilla Vim added it in 2016 I think, but by that time I had already fully switched to NeoVim and it didn't seem worth it to me to switch.", "context": "", "use_case": "code editing", "switched_from": "Vim", "story": "On caring for user data: NeoVim caused Vim undo files to be deleted"}, {"id": 797894576, "item_id": 49868411, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49868411", "by": "Insanity", "date": "2026-09-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I switched from Vim to NeoVim this year, after about 15 years on Vim.", "excerpt": "I switched from Vim to NeoVim this year, after about 15 years on Vim. Not withstanding this incident, I would say that on the whole it has been a good experience with Neovim. (I didn\u2019t actually ever use the persistent undo functionality in vim. Guess because of VCS it\u2019s less needed for my use-case).", "context": "15-year Vim user", "use_case": "code editing", "switched_from": "Vim", "story": "On caring for user data: NeoVim caused Vim undo files to be deleted"}, {"id": 797891600, "item_id": 49868225, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49868225", "by": "jeremyjh", "date": "2026-09-27", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I think Neovim's decisions are justfiable in this context.", "excerpt": "This story has no references that support the author's version of events, but it does appear to be substantially true that: 1. The change would break undo history, for both Neovim and Vim [see edit: this is not the really the case] 2. This means Neovim would delete data created by a different program, on another user's computer. 3. This was known before the feature was released. 4. They did it anyway. I don't think t", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "On caring for user data: NeoVim caused Vim undo files to be deleted"}, {"id": 797887520, "item_id": 49867970, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49867970", "by": "tmp_throwaway_q", "date": "2026-09-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I sympathize with the Neovim developer in that thread", "excerpt": "Gotta be honest, this seems like making a mountain out of a molehill. Yeah, DHH is an awful person. His endorsement was removed from the page pretty quickly, but of course not fast enough to avoid the social media mob handing down their verdict upon the thankless maintainers. I sympathize with the Neovim developer in that thread, the driveby Github commenters with seemingly no other involvement in the project are som", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "On caring for user data: NeoVim caused Vim undo files to be deleted"}, {"id": 797885824, "item_id": 49867864, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49867864", "by": "jeremyjh", "date": "2026-09-27", "stance": "compare", "quote": "To run it I type \"nvim\" instead of \"vim\".", "excerpt": "It absolutely is another program, I can tell this because it has a different name. To run it I type \"nvim\" instead of \"vim\". I use different config files to control its behavior. I install a different package on my system when I want to use it on a new computer.", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "On caring for user data: NeoVim caused Vim undo files to be deleted"}, {"id": 797882880, "item_id": 49867680, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49867680", "by": "WesolyKubeczek", "date": "2026-09-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I used neovim because it felt way faster by default.", "excerpt": "I used neovim because it felt way faster by default. I think treesitter runs circles around what classic vim is using to highlight syntax. That said, I never used both beyond basics, thus no horror stories either.", "context": "", "use_case": "code editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "On caring for user data: NeoVim caused Vim undo files to be deleted"}, {"id": 797881889, "item_id": 49867618, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49867618", "by": "sdcfgy", "date": "2026-09-27", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Feeling terribly vindicated at this point", "excerpt": "I've used vim since the first time it appeared in Debian repos. I have been told a thousand times that NeoVim is better, more modern and solves many (conveniently never cited) issues. I just ignored it and carried on. Feeling terribly vindicated at this point as it's a feature I use regularly and have no idea that it would be an issue in NeoVim.", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "On caring for user data: NeoVim caused Vim undo files to be deleted"}, {"id": 797794001, "item_id": 49862125, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49862125", "by": "dhon_", "date": "2026-09-27", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use nixvim for generating my neovim config", "excerpt": "Yeah my setup is pretty similar, I use a shared repo for my work laptop and home desktop. I test out new setups at home, and typically run nixpkgs-unstable there for a few weeks before migrating the work machine. I use nixvim for generating my neovim config (and I have a flake output for running that on MacOS where I don't use nix a lot) although I've been pairing back my plugins lately as I find I'm spending less ti", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Swap, ZRAM, Zswap and Hibernate on NixOS"}, {"id": 797647968, "item_id": 49852998, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49852998", "by": "davidee", "date": "2026-09-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I made the jump to nvim a while ago - I highly recommend using vim keybindings in vscode to get used to them", "excerpt": "If you're serious - I made the jump to nvim a while ago - I highly recommend using vim keybindings in vscode to get used to them/learn them, without having to worry about setting up a viable vim configuration/learn everything at once.", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Bug: Border radius has infected VSCode editor"}, {"id": 797174416, "item_id": 49823401, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49823401", "by": "halfcat", "date": "2026-09-23", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I\u2019m currently experimenting with running:", "excerpt": "I\u2019m currently experimenting with running: - neovim - in VS Code [1] - in the browser Cloud VM runs the built-in `code serve-web` command, over Tailscale using `tailscale serve`. No SSH. Extensions work. No extensions run locally (with SSH some extensions have to run locally on your machine). I\u2019m trying to see how little I can run on my local machine. VS Code over SSH is a good step in that direction, but there\u2019s more", "context": "", "use_case": "editing on a cloud VM", "switched_from": "", "story": "VSCode's SSH Agent Is Bananas (2025)"}, {"id": 795455042, "item_id": 49715940, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49715940", "by": "tambourine_man", "date": "2026-09-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I\u2019ve been trying to move to NeoVim but can never find the time.", "excerpt": "Another shout-out for MacVim. My favorite editor for years, I use it in conjunction with Vim in the terminal. I\u2019ve been trying to move to NeoVim but can never find the time. And regular MacVim/Vim is already awesome.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Leaving Linux"}, {"id": 793158816, "item_id": 49572426, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49572426", "by": "ryanscript01123", "date": "2026-09-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "having a blast improving my workflow with Neovim", "excerpt": "Location: Minneapolis, MN, USA Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: No Technologies: TypeScript, JavaScript, React, Vue, Svelte, Golang, Node, Python, FastAPI, Django, PHP, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Claude, AWS, Terraform, Docker, CI/CD, Git, HTML, CSS, Tailwind, Jest, Mapbox, ArcGIS, Bash, Linux R\u00e9sum\u00e9/CV: https://ryanisler.com/resume Email: islerryan@gmail.com Portfolio: https://github.com/ryanIs Senior Full Stack Developer", "context": "Senior full stack developer", "use_case": "editor workflow", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (September 2026)"}, {"id": 792170192, "item_id": 49510637, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49510637", "by": "commandersaki", "date": "2026-08-31", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use the default neovim theme", "excerpt": "I use the default neovim theme and I feel that's essentially what I get out of it. Feels like sometimes I don't have highlighting enabled.", "context": "", "use_case": "code editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Highlighting My Code Based on How Much I Care"}, {"id": 791731778, "item_id": 49483236, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49483236", "by": "godelski", "date": "2026-08-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "vim will still win while also replacing VS Code, Obsidian, and a dozen other applications", "excerpt": "I'm surprised there's only a single mention of tiling window managers here. No talk about i3[0] or hyprland[1]? I mean these things aren't only highly usable, they're absolutely beautiful[2]. I'll also add that being keyboard driven helps people with disabilities AND makes things easier for AI agents. For exactly the same reason too. It's far easier for programs to hit key codes than try to determine pixel locations ", "context": "power user who lives in the terminal", "use_case": "editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven"}, {"id": 790430945, "item_id": 49401934, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49401934", "by": "tombert", "date": "2026-08-22", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I couldn't find good TLA+ bindings for Neovim", "excerpt": "Tangential, but I've found something LLMs are actually ridiculously good at is making LSP servers. I couldn't find good TLA+ bindings for Neovim, so I got Claude to hack together an LSP server for it [1]. It works shockingly well, and it only took about an hour of arguing with Claude to do it. I find it's not terribly good at actually writing TLA+ (with some very recent tests with Fable), so I'm not completely useles", "context": "", "use_case": "editing TLA+", "switched_from": "", "story": "Rust Glancer: Rust LSP using 100x less RAM"}, {"id": 790415973, "item_id": 49400998, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49400998", "by": "folkrav", "date": "2026-08-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "neovim as a text editor", "excerpt": "Not OP but, I regularly use : - yazi as a file explorer - lazygit for git - tmux/zellij as multiplexers - fzf left and right for a bunch of utils (terminal history, switching between projects in zellij/tmux when working in multi-project workspaces, etc) - neovim as a text editor - glow for markdown reading - currently on pi for my home harness, CC at work I'm probably missing a few but those are the ones I use more o", "context": "", "use_case": "text editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Stop Making TUIs"}, {"id": 790407392, "item_id": 49400462, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49400462", "by": "israrkhan", "date": "2026-08-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "They take less memory. compare vscode vs nvim.", "excerpt": "TUIs, work on several operating systems. I use same set of apps across Mac, windows and Linux. You can use them remotely over SSH connections, and they can survive disconects (within tmux). No VNC, or X11 forwarding needed. They take less memory. compare vscode vs nvim. Super fast to launch. They can integrate with other TUIs and shell apps, shell-scripts, pipes and lastly they do not contain Ads. lol", "context": "uses TUIs across Mac, Windows and Linux", "use_case": "editing in terminal", "switched_from": "", "story": "Stop Making TUIs"}, {"id": 790245233, "item_id": 49390327, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49390327", "by": "software_writer", "date": "2026-08-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "introduced me to so many amazing tools like neovim, tmux, tiling window managers, Arch Linux, and countless TUIs", "excerpt": "Switching to Omarchy was one of the best decisions I made last year that improved my everyday computing experience so much, and introduced me to so many amazing tools like neovim, tmux, tiling window managers, Arch Linux, and countless TUIs.. Haven't touched my old MacBook this year at all. If you're in the market for a new laptop / operating system, I highly recommend you give it a try.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Omacom Foundation Launches with $8M"}, {"id": 790204260, "item_id": 49387766, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49387766", "by": "Alien1Being", "date": "2026-08-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "particularly when combined with TUI applications like yazi, lsd, fzf , neovim etc", "excerpt": "Linux is so very predictably stable from a desktop user perspective . It is an absolute pleasure to use , particularly when combined with TUI applications like yazi, lsd, fzf , neovim etc Been using it since the early nineties . At work I use Windows Server 2025 as my desktop ( the alternative would be the dreadful AI infested Windows 11). While Windows Server 2025 is not dreadful , the Linux experience is so much ni", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Linux 7.2 Released"}, {"id": 789788448, "item_id": 49361778, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49361778", "by": "rivetfasten", "date": "2026-08-19", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use neovim on NixOS", "excerpt": "I use neovim on NixOS and many others do too. I don't see what one has to do with the other.", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Vim wants you to control, VSCode wants you to consume"}, {"id": 789322642, "item_id": 49332665, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49332665", "by": "bheadmaster", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I've actually been using `buf_ls` for a while now in NeoVim", "excerpt": "Make sure to take reporting negativity bias into account. People will speak up when they don't like something, while stay quiet when everything is fine. I, personally, enjoy Buf. It has solved many frustrations I've had with The Way it was previously done, manually installing protoc plugins, writing arcane flags into scripts nobody wants to touch, working around various quirks, like how protoc produces different outp", "context": "", "use_case": "editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Protobuf has LSP support. You're welcome"}, {"id": 788545874, "item_id": 49284117, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49284117", "by": "lrvick", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "a Crush client running beside neovim in a herdr session", "excerpt": "Are there really daily driver Linux users that want to run a proprietary gui based LLM solution that Sam Altman gets to keylog AND have full remote code execution on their system? This feels like trolling. Meanwhile I am looking at a Crush client running beside neovim in a herdr session I am accessing via ssh to a machine in my garage with 4 local GPUs. I think we Linux users have got this without Sams help.", "context": "", "use_case": "editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "ChatGPT Desktop (Codex Desktop) for Linux"}, {"id": 786175089, "item_id": 49135943, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49135943", "by": "leonvoss", "date": "2026-08-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I moved to Neovim which has barely any efficiency downside anymore", "excerpt": "I don't think it offers any. I got tired of switching between Codex and Claude plus I wanted to start using glm and kimi so I switch to pi. Then I got tired of VSCode eating up battery and RAM so I moved to Neovim which has barely any efficiency downside anymore since most code is not written by hand and if you know how to use it well it was only maybe 10% less efficient than VSCode to begin with. I am not sure why a", "context": "", "use_case": "code editor", "switched_from": "VS Code", "story": "Cursor removed cost information from the usage page and CSV export"}, {"id": 785726097, "item_id": 49107881, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49107881", "by": "DrewADesign", "date": "2026-07-30", "stance": "warn", "quote": "it was fragile, and while it was theoretically infinitely flexible, practically, it was too big of a PITA to change", "excerpt": "It\u2019s a balance. It\u2019s easy to spend more time dickering with tools than you save by having those tools. I used to have this amazing neovim setup that worked exactly like I wanted it to. Unfortunately, it was fragile, and while it was theoretically infinitely flexible, practically, it was too big of a PITA to change to be flexible on the run. Then a couple of unrelated plugin changes caused some big problems with my se", "context": "", "use_case": "code editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Productivity Mirage"}, {"id": 782224288, "item_id": 48889018, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48889018", "by": "rafaelnexus", "date": "2026-07-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use only Neovim, and paired with CodeCompanion it is really powerful and ergonomic", "excerpt": "I use only Neovim, and paired with CodeCompanion it is really powerful and ergonomic, way more them combining external harnesses. At least for me.", "context": "", "use_case": "editor with AI", "switched_from": "", "story": "How do you use Vim in the era of AI?"}, {"id": 781913360, "item_id": 48869585, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48869585", "by": "rstagi", "date": "2026-07-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "neovim + claude code + open terminal is exactly my setup!", "excerpt": "neovim + claude code + open terminal is exactly my setup! But all the heavy lifting I used to do simply I\u2019m not doing it anymore. I spend most of the time creating new worktrees and reviewing code, and I guess I\u2019m just not interested about the implementation details that much (not that I don\u2019t look at the code, but minor styling things I just ignore them right now) I\u2019m transitioning to this new way of work btw, so I ", "context": "", "use_case": "editor in AI workflow", "switched_from": "", "story": "How do you use Vim in the era of AI?"}, {"id": 776595264, "item_id": 48537204, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48537204", "by": "rjzzleep", "date": "2026-06-14", "stance": "warn", "quote": "LSPs keep getting reimplemented, package managers keep getting reimplemented. It's a bit like the react version of text editors.", "excerpt": "LSPs keep getting reimplemented, package managers keep getting reimplemented. It's a bit like the react version of text editors. I used it more than I use emacs, but I agree with the assessment of doom emacs vs neovim.", "context": "", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Even More Batteries Included with Emacs"}, {"id": 772902864, "item_id": 48306429, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48306429", "by": "ku1ik", "date": "2026-05-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Neovim really gave it a new life - LSPs, Treesitter, scripting with Lua", "excerpt": "Similar story here. Before vim I used Kate, Gedit, Eclipse, JEdit and NetBeans IDE. Got into vim in 2009 and since then it's the editor I always come back to. Neovim really gave it a new life - LSPs, Treesitter, scripting with Lua (which I suck at) and many more. Over last 15 years I had shorter and longer periods where I tried/used something else (VS Code, Emacs/Spacemacs, helix) but it's always been vim/neovim. I d", "context": "long-time vim user since 2009", "use_case": "text editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "A Love Letter to Neovim"}, {"id": 768034817, "item_id": 48002176, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48002176", "by": "samgranieri", "date": "2026-05-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I spend all day in a terminal multiplexer (zellij) with neovim and other splits.", "excerpt": "I spend all day in a terminal multiplexer (zellij) with neovim and other splits. Using things like k9s / btop / lazygit / lazydocker helm / stern / whatever that systemd TUI I saw in here and started and will check out later just keeps me focused in one window, and that\u2019s pretty cool", "context": "", "use_case": "editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why TUIs Are Back"}, {"id": 767908144, "item_id": 47994259, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47994259", "by": "adamddev1", "date": "2026-05-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'm so glad I switched to NeoVim. I've got the good LSP and auto-complete stuff", "excerpt": "I'm so glad I switched to NeoVim. I've got the good LSP and auto-complete stuff, a nicer grepping experience, semantic moving and selecting with treesitter textobjects, and absolutely ZERO LLM AI stuff. (I still use LLMs outside my editor for some searching and questions, but may try to cut that down too.) Call me a Luddite, but we are up against something extra insidious with this new AI wave, and the cracks of the ", "context": "", "use_case": "code editor without AI", "switched_from": "VS Code", "story": "VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage"}, {"id": 767201088, "item_id": 47950068, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47950068", "by": "submeta", "date": "2026-04-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "NeoVim gives me everything I was looking for in Zed: Speed, a polished UI, quick startup, not overloaded.", "excerpt": "Zed is a very polished and nice product. I tried hard to use it, especially when I decided to migrate away from Emacs. But NeoVim gives me everything I was looking for in Zed: Speed, a polished UI, quick startup, not overloaded. So between Zed and NeoVim I decided for the latter. I use Neovide in GUI and neovim in terminal. I don\u2019t use AI alongside nvim, but claude code helps me configure my config file in lua. So my", "context": "", "use_case": "coding, journaling, documentation", "switched_from": "Emacs", "story": "Zed is 1.0"}, {"id": 760315393, "item_id": 47519712, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47519712", "by": "roryrjb", "date": "2026-03-25", "stance": "warn", "quote": "a large section of the community want to create more complex TUI elements or replicate GUI interfaces and make it more like VS Code", "excerpt": "I think I will use vim-classic and possibly contribute to it. Not because of AI, but because I actually want to use Vim over say something like Neovim* and I actually like vimscript, which imo didn't need the development of vim9script to improve it. Regarding why not Neovim, I think it's because a large section of the community want to create more complex TUI elements or replicate GUI interfaces and make it more like", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "A Eulogy for Vim"}, {"id": 756653265, "item_id": 47290829, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47290829", "by": "debois", "date": "2026-03-07", "stance": "warn", "quote": "plugins and updates kept breaking it", "excerpt": "I switched from neovim because plugins and updates kept breaking it, and I never really did feel like I was in control of it anyway. Helix does what it does, no fuzz. Never breaks. You do start to think \u201ccan I get helix keybindings in my shell\u201d, though.", "context": "", "use_case": "text editor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Helix: A post-modern text editor"}, {"id": 753472256, "item_id": 47092016, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47092016", "by": "ativzzz", "date": "2026-02-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'm fully onboard the Neovim train. Lua is a much better language than vimscript", "excerpt": "I'm fully onboard the Neovim train. Lua is a much better language than vimscript and there's a lot more interest in Neovim so there's more interesting packages that people create. Regular Vim is probably fine if you aren't gonna put as much effort into customizing it and if you just stick to the tried and true. I use nvim all the time for code exploration & figuring out what i need to tell the AI. Invest in tools and", "context": "", "use_case": "code exploration", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Is it worth learning Vim in 2026?"}]}