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junegunn
fzf.vim
Vim Script2016–2026
junegunn / fzf.vim

fzf.vim

fzf :heart: vim

23Distinct people
23Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
10.3KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

fzf :heart: vim

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

Extremely valuable tool that I use nearly every day. Also check out the vim plugin: https://github.com/junegunn/fzf.vim.

sxg used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 1:03:20 AM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year23 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2016-10-05 15:19:56 UTC to 2026-07-05 23:13:30 UTC.

02462016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments20162017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments20212022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 6 mentions; 1 submissions, 5 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC615
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

From the project README

An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.

Read the project’s introduction
fzf ❤️ vim Things you can do with fzf and Vim. Rationale fzf itself is not a Vim plugin, and the official repository only provides the basic wrapper function for Vim. It's up to the users to write their own Vim commands with it. However, I've learned that many users of fzf are not familiar with Vimscript and are looking for the "default" implementation of the features they can find in the alternative Vim plugins. Why you should use fzf on Vim Because you can and you love fzf. fzf runs asynchronously and can be orders of magnitude faster than similar Vim plugins. However, the benefit may not be noticeable if the size of the input is small, which is the case for many of the commands provided here. Nevertheless I wrote them anyway since it's really easy to implement custom selector with fzf. Installation fzf.vim depends on the basic Vim plugin of the main fzf repository, which means you need to set up both "fzf" and "fzf.vim" on Vim. To learn more about fzf/Vim integration, see README-VIM. Using vim-plug Plug 'junegunn/fzf', { 'do': { -> fzf#install() } } Plug 'junegunn/fzf.vim' fzf#install() makes sure that you have the latest binary, but it's optional, so you can omit it if you use a plugin manager that doesn't support hooks. Dependencies fzf 0.54.0 or above For syntax-highlighted preview, install bat If delta is available, GF?, Commits and BCommits will use it to format git diff output. Ag requires The Silver Searcher (ag) Rg requires ripgrep (rg) Tags and Helptags require Perl Tags PREFIX requires readtags command from Universal Ctags # Installing dependencies using Homebrew brew install fzf bat ripgrep the_silver_searcher perl universal-ctags Commands Command List :Files [PATH] Files (runs $FZF_DEFAULT_COMMAND if defined) :GFiles [OPTS] Git files (git ls-files) :GFiles? Git files (git status) :Buffers Open buffers :Colors Color schemes :Ag [PATTERN] ag search result (ALT-A to select all, ALT-D to deselect all) :Rg [PATTERN] rg search result (ALT-A to select all, ALT-D to deselect all) :RG [PATTERN] rg search result; relaunch ripgrep on every keystroke :Lines [QUERY] Lines in loaded buffers :BLines [QUERY] Lines in the current buffer :Tags [PREFIX] Tags in the project (ctags -R) :BTags [QUERY] Tags in the current buffer :Changes Changelist across all open buffers :Marks Marks :BMarks Marks in the current buffer :Jumps Jumps :Windows Windows :Locate PATTERN locate command output :History v:oldfiles and open buffers :History: Command history :History/ Search history :Snippets Snippets (UltiSnips) :Commits [LOG_OPTS] Git commits (requires fugitive.vim) :BCommits [LOG_OPTS] Git commits for the current buffer; visual-select lines to track changes in the range :Commands Commands :Maps Normal mode mappings :Helptags Help tags 1 :Filetypes File types Most commands support CTRL-T / CTRL-X / CTRL-V key bindings to open in a new tab, a new split, or in a new vertical split Most commands support ALT-ENTER to insert the selected items into the current buffer instead of opening them. The inserted text depends on the command: file path (:Files, :GFiles, :Buffers, :History, :Locate), line content (:Lines, :BLines, :Marks, :Changes), matched text (:Rg, :Ag, :Grep), tag name (:Tags, :BTags), or commit hash (:Commits, :BCommits) Most commands support CTRL-O to open the current entry in the window fzf was started from, leaving fzf open, so you can look through several entries in a single run (:Files, :GFiles, :GFiles?, :Buffers, :History, :Locate, :Rg, :Ag, :Grep, :Lines, :BLines, :Tags, :BTags, :Marks, :Changes, :Commits, :BCommits). Requires fzf 0.74.4 or later, and is not offered in fullscreen mode, with a layout that leaves no other window (enew, tabnew), on Windows, or when the key is already used by g:fzf_vim.paste_key, g:fzf_action, or the command itself, as CTRL-ALT-X is in :Buffers Bang-versions of the commands (e.g. Ag!) will open fzf in fullscreen You can set g:fzf_vim.command_prefix to give the same prefix to the commands e.g. let g:fzf_vim.command_prefix = 'Fzf' and you have FzfFiles, etc. (1: Helptags will shadow the command of the same name from pathogen. But its functionality is still available via call pathogen#helptags(). ↩) Customization Configuration options of the base plugin Every command in fzf.vim internally calls fzf#wrap function of the main repository which supports a set of global option variables. So please read through README-VIM to learn more about them. Configuration options for fzf.vim All configuration values for this plugin are stored in g:fzf_vim dictionary, so make sure to initialize it before assigning any configuration values to it. " Initialize configuration dictionary let g:fzf_vim = {} Preview window Some commands will show the preview window on the right. You can customize the behavior with g:fzf_vim.preview_window. Here are some examples: " This is the default option: " - Preview window on the right with 50% width " - CTRL-/ will toggle preview window. " - Note that this array is passed as arguments to fzf#vim#with_preview function. " - To learn more about preview window options, see `--preview-window` section of `man fzf`. let g:fzf_vim.preview_window = ['right,50%', 'ctrl-/'] " Preview window is hidden by default. You can toggle it with ctrl-/. " It will show on the right with 50% width, but if the width is smaller " than 70 columns, it will show above the candidate list let g:fzf_vim.preview_window = ['hidden,right,50%,<70(up,40%)', 'ctrl-/'] " Empty value to disable preview window altogether let g:fzf_vim.preview_window = [] " fzf.vim needs bash to display the preview window. " On Windows, fzf.vim will first see if bash is in $PATH, then if " Git bash (C:\Program Files\Git\bin\bash.exe) is available. " If you want it to use a different bash, set this variable. " let g:fzf_vim = {} " let g:fzf_vim.preview_bash = 'C:\Git\bin\bash.exe' Paste key Most commands support a key to inser
Read the full README on GitHub

What Hacker News says

1 sources
These are all good tips but most of the anti-patterns seem to skew towards beginners (e.g. don't use the arrow keys, don't navigate in insert mode). One that I think is more common among intermediate, and even advanced, users is the misuse of tabs, windows, and buffers. A lot of people have a tendency to think of each tab as corresponding to a single open file. This is very understandable because it closely matches the paradigm of most IDEs but it's actually an anti-pattern in VIM. Tabs are really meant to be more like workspaces where you arrange multiple windows into a desired layouts. You then have one buffer for each file that you're dealing with and view them in your windows. It's perfectly fine for multiple windows to share a single buffer or to switch out the buffer that is being viewed in any given window. This StackOverflow answe
Read the rest
r [1] and this blogpost [2] both go into a fair bit more detail. If you're trying out this approach for the first time then you probably want to add `set hidden` to your configuration in order to avoid automatically closing buffers that aren't currently being viewed in a window. Coupling this approach with fzf.vim [3] makes managing very large numbers of files a breeze compared to using one tab per file. [1] - http://stackoverflow.com/a/26710166 [2] - http://joshldavis.com/2014/04/05/vim-tab-madness-buffers-vs-... [3] - https://github.com/junegunn/fzf.vim
In Vim Anti-Patterns

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