Ctrl+S and Ctrl+Space Amazingly Available For Custom vim/NeoVim Keyboard Shortcuts
Discover how I maximize my productivity with my new journaling approach, allowing myself to edit multiple files with ease without getting lost in a sea of tabs. Utilize the astoundingly available `Ctrl+S` and `Ctrl+Space` keyboard shortcuts to quickly cycle through buffers and access important resources instantly. Get lost in a sea of open screens and windows no more!
The Easily Typed Ctrl+S and Ctrl+Space Keyboard Shortcuts Surprisingly Available to Give vim/NeoVim Productivity Boost!
By Michael Levin
Tuesday, May 2, 2023
With my new journaling approach, I have fewer files loaded simultaneously into
my vim/NeoVim buffers by default. I have the ones that I truly every day feel
the need to edit, which leaves out my website homepage and such, especially now
that it’s being built from the journal, so gets updated frequently. I went down
from like 15 files loaded at once to just 5. I cycle through them with my
Ctrl+Space keyboard shortcut, and when I want to jump to the first buffer
which is this journal and which is all the time, I use the astoundingly
available Ctrl+S shortcut.
Ctrl+S was seemingly available because it was reserved for Terminal
Scroll-Lock, something from the past which I certainly don’t need to do. And
what a premium sweet keyboard shortcut. Imagine cycling forward through your
vim buffers with Ctrl+Space like flipping TV channels in the olden days, and
whenever you want to be on “Channel 1” such as it were, you just let your
already perfectly positioned middle finger of your left hand drop onto the S.
What a productivity boon!
It seems that almost every Ctrl+something key combination is already used for something, either by the Terminal programs in general or by vim/NeoVim in particular, and so it’s a gift to find those rare available ones for the most common things you do every day, which for me is cycling through my vim buffers to see what plates need to be spun.
- What’s most broken?
- Where do you get the biggest bang for the buck?
- What plates need spinning?
Very strong metaphors. And the effect of getting lost in a sea of open screens and windows is one of the biggest productivity killers. And so since vim/NeoVim is always fullscreen (maximized) on my first virtual desktop, there’s a sub-index in my head of all my important files that I already know are open. This is a wonderful “fixed position” approach to random-access of your important resources. Again, it’s about local paths to resources, your most valuable asset. Get to what you need instantly.