Neo(Vim) on Steroids: vim-sneak + easymotion = hop.nvim

#neovim #vim #lua #tutorial

If you've been using Vim for a while now, you probably stumbled upon some navigation plugins like easymotion and vim-sneak. Unless... you're still stuck inside vim without any idea of how to quit. (SHEESH!)

Kidding aside...

easymotion is used for navigating the buffer by pressing a keystroke and marking the text you can jump to. This is demonstrated below. Github

vim-sneak, on the other hand, is also used for navigating your buffer. But instead of relying on marking texts with a keystroke like easymotion, it takes 1-2 characters as an input and marks the text that contains those input characters. As seen below. Github

Okay, full disclosure, I lied.

I didn't actually use easymotion and vim-sneak in the GIFs above. I used hop.nvim.

hop.nvim is a navigation plugin that was created in order to solve easymotion's tendency to temporarily manipulate the buffer in order to mark texts and combines vim-sneak motion as a bonus. Github

You can combine the best of both worlds with one plugin and here's my Neovim configuration for it.



-- hop.nvim
require'hop'.setup()

-- normal mode (easymotion-like)
vim.api.nvim_set_keymap("n", "<Leader><Leader>b", "<cmd>HopWordBC<CR>", {noremap=true})
vim.api.nvim_set_keymap("n", "<Leader><Leader>w", "<cmd>HopWordAC<CR>", {noremap=true})
vim.api.nvim_set_keymap("n", "<Leader><Leader>j", "<cmd>HopLineAC<CR>", {noremap=true})
vim.api.nvim_set_keymap("n", "<Leader><Leader>k", "<cmd>HopLineBC<CR>", {noremap=true})

-- visual mode (easymotion-like)
vim.api.nvim_set_keymap("v", "<Leader><Leader>w", "<cmd>HopWordAC<CR>", {noremap=true})
vim.api.nvim_set_keymap("v", "<Leader><Leader>b", "<cmd>HopWordBC<CR>", {noremap=true})
vim.api.nvim_set_keymap("v", "<Leader><Leader>j", "<cmd>HopLineAC<CR>", {noremap=true})
vim.api.nvim_set_keymap("v", "<Leader><Leader>k", "<cmd>HopLineBC<CR>", {noremap=true})


-- normal mode (sneak-like)
vim.api.nvim_set_keymap("n", "s", "<cmd>HopChar2AC<CR>", {noremap=false})
vim.api.nvim_set_keymap("n", "S", "<cmd>HopChar2BC<CR>", {noremap=false})

-- visual mode (sneak-like)
vim.api.nvim_set_keymap("v", "s", "<cmd>HopChar2AC<CR>", {noremap=false})
vim.api.nvim_set_keymap("v", "S", "<cmd>HopChar2BC<CR>", {noremap=false})

vim.api.nvim_set_keymap() is used to bind keystrokes to a command in your init.lua file.

For those using Vimscript / VimL



vim.api.nvim_set_keymap("n", "<Leader><Leader>b", "<cmd>HopWordBC<CR>", {noremap=true})

-- is equivalent to

nnoremap <Leader><Leader>b :HopWordBC<CR>

There are more options for hop.nvim that you can check with :h hop but these are the ones I use.

HopWordBC looks for a word Before Cursor
HopWordAC looks for a word After Cursor
HopLineBC and HopLineAC does the same before and after cursor respectively, but looks for lines instead of words.
HopChar2AC takes 2 characters as an input and looks for texts that contain those 2 characters After Cursor
HopChar2BC does the same as HopChar2AC, but before the cursor