# Vim Mode

Zed includes a Vim emulation layer known as "vim mode". On this page, you will learn how to turn Zed's vim mode on or off, what tools and commands Zed provides to help you navigate and edit your code, and generally how to make the most of vim mode in Zed.

You'll learn how to:

- Understand the core differences between Zed's vim mode and traditional Vim
- Enable or disable vim mode
- Make the most of Zed-specific features within vim mode
- Customize vim mode key bindings
- Configure vim mode settings

Whether you're new to vim mode or an experienced Vim user looking to optimize your Zed experience, this guide will help you harness the full power of modal editing in Zed.

## Zed's vim mode design

Vim mode tries to offer a familiar experience to Vim users: it replicates the behavior of motions and commands precisely when it makes sense and uses Zed-specific functionality to provide an editing experience that "just works" without requiring configuration on your part.

This includes support for semantic navigation, multiple cursors, or other features usually provided by plugins like surrounding text.

So, Zed's vim mode does not replicate Vim one-to-one, but it meshes Vim's modal design with Zed's modern features to provide a more fluid experience. It's also configurable, so you can add your own key bindings or override the defaults.

### Core differences

There are four types of features in vim mode that use Zed's core functionality, leading to some differences in behavior:

1. **Motions**: vim mode uses Zed's semantic parsing to tune the behavior of motions per language. For example, in Rust, jumping to matching bracket with `%` works with the pipe character `|`. In JavaScript, `w` considers `$` to be a word character.
2. **Visual block selections**: vim mode uses Zed's multiple cursor to emulate visual block selections, making block selections a lot more flexible. For example, anything you insert after a block selection updates on every line in real-time, and you can add or remove cursors anytime.
3. **Macros**: vim mode uses Zed's recording system for vim macros. So, you can capture and replay more complex actions, like autocompletion.
4. **Search and replace**: vim mode uses Zed's search system, so, the syntax for regular expressions is slightly different compared to Vim. [Head to the Regex differences section](#regex-differences) for details.

> **Note:** The foundations of Zed's vim mode should already cover many use cases, and we're always looking to improve it. If you find missing features that you rely on in your workflow, please [file an issue on GitHub](https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues).

## Enabling and disabling vim mode

When you first open Zed, you'll see a checkbox on the welcome screen that allows you to enable vim mode.

If you missed this, you can toggle vim mode on or off anytime by opening the command palette and using the workspace command `toggle vim mode`.

> **Note**: This command toggles the following property in your user settings:
>
> ```json
> {
>   "vim_mode": true
> }
> ```

## Zed-specific features

Zed is built on a modern foundation that (among other things) uses tree-sitter and language servers to understand the content of the file you're editing and supports multiple cursors out of the box.

Vim mode has several "core Zed" key bindings that will help you make the most of Zed's specific feature set.

### Language server

The following commands use the language server to help you navigate and refactor your code.

| Command                                  | Default Shortcut |
| ---------------------------------------- | ---------------- |
| Go to definition                         | `g d`            |
| Go to declaration                        | `g D`            |
| Go to type definition                    | `g y`            |
| Go to implementation                     | `g I`            |
| Rename (change definition)               | `c d`            |
| Go to All references to the current word | `g A`            |