Introduction

MacVim Vim - the text editor - for macOS Download MacVim Release Notes (r171) GitHub: MacVim GitHub page; Releases: Binary releases and release notes; FAQ: Answers to some frequently asked questions; Troubleshooting: How to track down the source of common problems; Debugging: How to generate a debug log; MacVim is maintained by macvim-dev. This page was generated by GitHub. Vim is a programmable text editor for the terminal. It has become a de facto standard terminal text editor A command line version of Vim for macOS is builtin into the OS distribution. For example giton macOS uses Vim by default to prompt for writing a commit message. Vim Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to make creating and changing any kind of text very efficient. It is included as 'vi' with most UNIX systems and with Apple macOS.

Vim which stands for vi improved is a text editor and an improved version of vi editor that is designed to run on CLI (Command Line Interface) as well as GUI (Graphical user interface) .

It was developed by Bram Moolenaar in 1991. It is a free and open source software which was released under the license which includes some charityware clauses.

In this tutorial, we will learn the steps involved in the installation of Vim on MacOS.

Prerequisites

• MacOS
• Login as an administrator on terminal.

Installation

The following steps are used to install Vim on MacOS.

1) Download the latest version

To install Vim editor on MacOS, we have to download its latest version by visiting the official website I.e. https://vim.sourceforge.io/download.php

2) Mount the disk image file

The downloaded file stored in Downloads folder (in my case) is a disk image file which needs to be mounted to the Volumes directory. mounting needs a simple command as follows.

3) Copy the application file to Applications

The file is mounted as Vim.app which is an executable application file stored inside the Volumes directory. This file needs to be copied to the Application directory where the Applications are installed. This will be done via a simple command given below.

4) Unmount the file

We have done with installing vim on our MacOS. The next step which needs to be done is unmounting the file. This will be done by using unmount option with hdiutil command.

5) Working with Vim

Once we install Vim on our MacOS, we can use it for programming in any of the languages or for editing of any of the documents. To get started with the Vim, we either type simply vim on command line or we can open it via GUI by double clicking the vim icon shown in the Applications. Vim opens in the terminal which is shown in the image.

Well, we have successfully installed and get started with the VIM editor on MacOS.

For the past five years, my go-to text editors have been Vim and gVim/MacVim.Currently, I work on macOS with Ubuntu, as a target OS, running on the local VMware Fusion virtual machine.
Personally, I prefer to use the macOS GUI over Ubuntu and do not enjoy constantly switching between windows,so I used to connect to the machine with ssh -XY user@server and run gVim there.Since macOS supports X Window System, I was able to open the gVim window in macOS as a “native” application.
However, when I had to edit a file locally on macOS, naturally I used MacVim.

Over time, it became increasingly inconvenient because the behavior and appearance of gVim and MacVim had minor differences.Additionally, the X Window System simply does not fit the macOS ecosystem well.

Visual Studio Code

I started to search for efficient alternatives and almost ended up switching to Visual Studio Code.Don’t get me wrong - VS Code is an awesome text editor with features that a Vim user can only dream of, but I got used to my Vim shortcuts and plugins. I know there is Vim support in VS Code, but it is not the same.

Neovim

Eventually, I discovered Neovim.

Neovim is a refactor, and sometimes redactor, in the tradition of Vim (which itself derives from Stevie). It is not a rewrite but a continuation and extension of Vim.

Nvim always includes ALL features, in contrast to Vim (which ships withvarious combinations of 100+ optional features). Think of it as a leanerversion of Vim’s “HUGE” build. This reduces surface area for bugs, andremoves a common source of confusion and friction for users.

Once Neovim is installed, it behaves the same way as Vim and supports all of its plugins.Basically, it is a drop-in replacement of Vim.

Neovim also supports remote plugins that communicate via msgpack-rpc.The RPC messages can be sent through various channels, such as Unix socket, TCP socket, or stdin/stdout.

Neovim GUI clients are implemented as remote plugins and most of them communicate through stdin/stdout.Each GUI client launches nvim process and sends it commands in msgpack format via stdin, and nvimreplies back via stdout with information on how to redraw the screen.

Neovim + Neovim-Qt

Neovim-Qt is a compact Neovim GUI client written in C++ with Qt5.If I need to edit a file locally, I open Neovim-Qt, which works as described above.
Additionally, Neovim-Qt is able to connect to a Neovim instance, operating in server mode.In order to edit files on the virtual machine, I launch a nvim process within the virtual environment, enabling listening on the given IP/port:

and then start Neovim-Qt with the following parameters on macOS:

Running all of these commands manually every time I need to open a text editor is quite tedious.Therefore, I decided to automate the process with a simple script that provides the alias rgvim, where r stands for “remote”.

Mac Vim Gui

Finally, I can use a single GUI for both operating systems!

Vim Macos Catalina

Screenshots:

Local macOS environment:

Vim Mac M1

Connected to a remote instance: