Vifm Q&A - Recent questions and answers in vifm

Answered: Is it possible to achieve renaming in the cmdline and put the position exactly before the extention name

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 21:36:11 +0000

I think I know how to do that, but maybe all you need is cW key? Or do you need this to edit the extension?

Answered: Scroll in the Quickview

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 21:16:16 +0000

You can do as shown here:

nnoremap <silent> <PageDown>  <C-w>w5j<C-w>w
nnoremap <silent> <PageUp>    <C-w>w5k<C-w>w

It works by switching into preview window (similarl to e), scrolling it, and then switching back.

If not, could the sentence containing the number of directories and files be moved to the top, so that it provides a quick summary?

This can be done as well, but at the cost of traversing directory tree to collect the statistics:

set previewoptions+=toptreestats

Answered: The tab color in inactive pane is not shown as expected

Sat, 22 Aug 2026 11:18:20 +0000

If you expect TabLine to have some effect, that's not the case swith set tabscope=pane. If it was applied on top of TopLine, that wouldn't add much value.

If you want selected tab look differently in different views, use TopLineSel to differentiate them.

With set tabscope=pane, highlilghting stack up like this for the active pane, because tab and top lines are combined into one:

  TopLine
    TopLineSel
      TabLineSel
        User1..User20

The inactive pane gets:

  TopLine
    TabLineSel
      User1..User20

Answered: Is it possible to not restore the name filters set in "vifmrc" configuration file?

Sat, 08 Aug 2026 16:47:50 +0000

windo filter! /(lost\+found|Desktop|\.pyo$|\.pyc$|xxxxx)/

You don't need :windo in vifmrc. It's implicit there for :set and :filter since v0.8.1 (released in 2016).

I wonder if there is any way to remove the name filters excluding the one set in "vifmrc" file?

That's basically two halves of the same filter that cannot be controlled independently and I can't think of a workaround that would work.

If it has to code to achieve it, could you please help give some hint which function I should adapt, many thanks.

You want to look at this range. Something like this may do:

Add new prev_*_filter fields to view_t (can be freed here; will be zero-initialized without new code).
Before name_filters_drop(view);: if new fields are NULL, save state in them.
After name_filters_drop(view);: restore the state from new fields.

This way zO and anything similar should always reset to the state set in configuration. You can add the new code around name_filters_remove(curr_view); here to not affect anything but zO.

Answered: sometimes the quickview for directory is very slow or not working under vsplit mode

Sat, 01 Aug 2026 09:42:14 +0000

it only shows [...]

This suggests you're not using builtin directory preview but invoking an external command. Show contents of the :fileviewer /etc menu to identify what that command is.

You either want to exclude directory from a particular preview command or adjust it (e.g., limit recursion depth).

UPDATE: this is a bug which is now fixed. The fix will be available in v0.15 (and in v0.14.5 if it will happen).

Answered: How to bind and

Fri, 03 Jul 2026 08:37:07 +0000

The list of supported special sequences is available in the documentation here and <a-.> or <a-,> aren't present there. However, typically Alt-combinations are Esc followed by a character, so just <esc>, and <esc>. should work.

Answered: Is there a way to count the number of open tabs?

Fri, 03 Jul 2026 08:29:00 +0000

Yes, there is tabpagenr(). There is always at least one tab so, "greater than or equal to 1" is always true.

nnoremap <silent> q : if tabpagenr('$') > 1
                  \ |     tabclose
                  \ | else
                  \ |     quit
                  \ | endif<cr>

However, that's literally the behaviour of :quit.

Answered: Use file type (not MIME) to define fileviewer

Thu, 21 May 2026 21:43:06 +0000

Do you get this result on Linux? Type always comes from the file program, but Mime Type may also come from Glib and looks like it's the one who gets it wrong.

There is no way to match by that type string and Glib is used if Vifm is compiled with its support. You can match by both file name and MIME type to reduce false positive results:

fileviewer {*.pub}<application/vnd.ms-publisher> ssh-keygen -l -f %c

Maybe there should be an option to specify priority of MIME type sources instead of hard-coding Glib to be the first one.

Answered: vifm --remote example with if then statement

Wed, 06 May 2026 13:11:24 +0000

You can change the outer quotes to double quotes:

vifm --remote +":if filetype('.') == 'dir' | echo 'Directory' | else | echo 'File' | endif"

If you're going to nest quotes, they need to be of a different kind or some kind of escaping is necessary.

Answered: Integrating zoxide with vifm

Sun, 03 May 2026 09:38:17 +0000

This is more of an answer rather than a question.

Then I'll do a bit of a review and ask a question :)

let $dir_name = fnameescape($Z_PICK)
cd $dir_name

This breaks entering into directories that require escaping. Either do cd $Z_PICK or execute 'cd' fnameescape($Z_PICK) (this variant can use a global variable like g:z_pick instead to not affect environment). Unlike in a shell, environment variables are expanded after parameter splitting.

I use zoxide to quickly jump to most recent directories which matches a substring.

What if it guessed the directory incorrectly, just do another try? Doesn't this mess up history so that cd - and $OLDPWD point to the path opened by mistake?

Answered: copy transfer speed

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 16:39:17 +0000

You can try disabling data synchronization in 'iooptions':

set iooptions-=datasync

Mind that unless keeping more data in RAM permits effective parallelisation of writes, Vifm's speed is closer to the real one (i.e., how fast data lands at the destination) and dd shows how fast you can load things into RAM buffers (possibly at the cost of pushing useful data out of it). There are sync and nocache parameters/options for dd as well in case you want to perform more comparisons.

dd may also keep all data in the kernel without copying to/from application, Vifm doesn't do that, making it somewhat slower.

Answered: Passing v:servername to script

Sun, 29 Mar 2026 16:29:19 +0000

The %{expression} syntax is specific to the 'statusline' option. A mapping could insert it via expression register (<c-r>=fnameescape(v:servername)<cr> in place of "%{v:servername}") or you could do

let $VIFM_SERVER_NAME = v:servername

in your vifmrc and then just use "$VIFM_SERVER_NAME".

Answered: all menus available

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 17:54:54 +0000

:apropos
:fileviewer
:filetype
:vifm (same as :version).

cnoreabbrev...........display noremap cmdline abbrevs

Nope, the menu is the same as for :cabbrev.

his[tory]..................display a menu with list of visited directories

The command displays various histories depending on its parameter.

Answered: Howto compare files ?

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 09:31:31 +0000

Hello,

Assuming that you want to compare files via Vim, the following can be used:

" use Vim to diff files
" uses selection of the current pane when it contains more than one file
" otherwise uses left pane file and right pane file keeping order inside Vim
command! diff : if selected() < 2
            \ |     if paneisat('right') && paneisat('bottom')
            \ |         execute '!vim -d %%C %%c'
            \ |     else
            \ |         execute '!vim -d %%c %%C'
            \ |     endif
            \ | else
            \ |     execute '!vim -d %%f'
            \ | endif

I should actually add this to sample vifmrc.

Answered: Automatic switch between light and dark themes

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 22:54:13 +0000

I’m not sure how you switch between light and dark themes, but if you are able to set an environment variable while doing so, you could add the following to your Vifm config:

if $IS_DARK_THEME == '1'
  colorscheme Default
else
  colorscheme dwmlight
endif

Answered: Folder name with dot

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 10:29:35 +0000

Sounds like you're using {ext} in 'viewcolumns', while you want to use {fileext}.

Answered: recall last selection

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 09:03:18 +0000

3rd method: use a command-line range (mostly useful for searching in a single file/directory with :.grep ...).

How to recall the lost selection (a bit like copen) after the grep command?

Use gs key for this. There is a similar gv key, but it restores only the last visually selected range, so not suitable for complex cases.

Answered: Three Letter Marker for filter

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 10:02:02 +0000

The total number of filtered out files is the only statistics explicitly collected by the code. Number of files excluded by a local filter can be derived in the code. Even this information is not exposed other than via the %x macro, so at the moment there is no way to display flags that you describe.

Answered: File/folder count on the bottom right corner

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 22:35:53 +0000

Hi,

Macros in 'rulerformat' reflect number of entries in the current list, hence .. (not sure why it's . on the screenshot) is counted when present.

You can hide .. by changing 'dotdirs' which will affect number of entries.

Affecting the count while keeping the entry will take adding new macros (although not really sure what to do about tree-views with multiple .. entries) or allowing formatting 'rulerformat' in Lua.

Answered: synchronize vifm with Xviewer

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 23:00:15 +0000

Hi,

This Xviewer? I don't see it's documentation, but this list of options doesn't look promising. It apparently supports plugins, so maybe that interface could be used (by way of writing a plugin).

In general for this to work you need to somehow communicate cursor position back to Vifm. A viewer needs to expose this information and then it should be sent/returned to Vifm.

Answered: behavior Enter Key

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 13:46:55 +0000

Seems like you're just closing the active window (terminal) in both cases. You can map <cr> similarly:

nnoremap <cr> : if filetype('.', 1) == 'dir'
            \ |     open
            \ | else
            \ |     execute '!'.$VIFM_TERMINAL 'vim %c &'
            \ | endif<cr>

An alternative is changing 'vicmd' option, but there a script may be necessary to keep everything working as expected.

Edit: added 1 parameter to resolve symbolic links.

Edit 2: this change fixes :open for symbolic links to directories when vifm is not present in $PATH. Until then, use cd %c as a functionally-equivalent workaround.

Answered: open file with the second filetype command from :file

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 13:31:43 +0000

Hi,

There is a form of :file which accepts prefix of a command to run. Not the same as position from the top, but the purpose is similar: to pick non-default handler. As an example, :file so opens soffice %c for a PDF file in case of the following configuration:

filextype *.pdf zathura %f %i &, apvlv %c, xpdf %c, soffice %c

Answered: Zoom preview window

Sat, 03 Jan 2026 11:36:00 +0000

The reason is that quickview is tied to the other pane, so that pane is kept visible. This behaviour dates back when one couldn't focus a quickview and enter view mode, so maybe Ctrl+W o could be permitted in this case with the other pane being shown automatically on exiting view mode.

By the way, there is also Ctrl+W | to maximize a window. "explore" view (after e) can also be used in the only mode.

Answered: Locked (permanent) tabs

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 23:31:23 +0000

Navigating from a "locked" tab automatically creates a new one.

Seems like this feature is meant for pane-level tabs and wouldn't fit global tabs. I might have even used it in some file manager, but it didn't really suit my workflow. It sounds kinda simple to do, but I'm sure there are various corner cases.

Admittedly, the functionality is somewhat similar to marks, but feels less rigid as it does not require editing the config.

Marks also don't require editing the config and can survive a restart. Just add bmarks to the value of 'vifminfo' option.

Answered: Show only symlinks

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 18:31:03 +0000

This should do it:

command! LnOnly find . -t l -H --max-depth=1 %u

You can also press b key in a menu to turn it into a list of files (limited to menus that present such lists).

Answered: Hide progress dialogue

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 11:42:29 +0000

There is no way to hide the dialog after it's open. This isn't related to 'uioptions', showing it by pressing i works the same.

Answered: show UID only

Sun, 28 Dec 2025 17:15:48 +0000

That's not how uid is supposed to work, the behaviour you see is a bug. Thanks for bringing this up.

Answered: Image preview issue in vifm after upgrading kitty

Sun, 28 Dec 2025 17:00:19 +0000

The list of changes for v0.43 mentions:

A new protocol for multiple cursors in the terminal (#8927)

I would think it may be related, but there are a few other things that look suspicious. This may need bisecting differences between v0.42.2 and v0.43.

Answered: prompt sudo password

Mon, 22 Dec 2025 14:21:38 +0000

I worked around that with this custom configuration

nnoremap <c-s> :!sudo -E vifm %c<cr>
if system('whoami') == "root"
  hi StatusLine guifg=#fb4934
endif

Answered: Different font for text and icons

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 17:41:57 +0000

Fonts are configured in a terminal emulator. I don't remember seeing a way to specify a font from an application and if there is one, it's unlikely to be possible to use more than one font at a time (their metrics would have to match or be adjusted on the fly in order for this to have a chance to work).

If JetBrains Mono has some icons, JetBrainsMono Nerd Font may use different (potentially bigger) glyphs for them. Otherwise you would probably have to combine fonts or edit one with FontForge or a similar application to scale/replace glyphs.

Answered: fileviewer: catchall for readable and non-readable files

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 17:50:08 +0000

You could use mimetypes for that, but they won't always give an expected result. For example, you list .py-files as unreadable, but their mimetype is text/x-script.python.

" non-directory with a mimetype starting with "text/"
fileviewer {*[^/]}<text/*> text-file-handler

" non-directory with a mimetype not starting with "text/"
fileviewer {*[^/]}!<text/*> non-text-file-handler

Answered: selects files/folders matching a pattern

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 18:36:15 +0000

Use :select command:

select *.jpg
select *part* " or select /part/
" jpg or png files that don't contain "to" substring
select {*.jpg,*.png}!/to/

The patterns are like in :filetype.

Answered: add automatic increasing numbering to a list of files/folders

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 18:32:27 +0000

I can't think of a way to do that without using Vim via :rename. There you can add numbers (e.g., :%s/^/1/), select a column of numbers visually with Ctrl-V and do gCtrl-A.

Answered: flat view - files starting with dot

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 13:10:41 +0000

%u doesn't filter out anything. From man fd:

By default fd will exclude hidden files and directories, as well as any files that match gitignore rules or ignore rules in .ignore or .fdignore files.

So you want to add -u or -H flag to your command.

Answered: macro for custom view

Sun, 23 Nov 2025 14:07:59 +0000

When inside of a custom view, %d is expanded to the root of the view which may not correspond to the directory where a file is located. Which directory path do you want to get in the end? If it's where the file is, %c:p:h should do, but the way you describe it is as if you want %d exactly how it's expanded. Please clarify.

Answered: shortcut for relativenumber

Thu, 06 Nov 2025 12:18:50 +0000

That's possible. Key's count is available in v:count and v:count1, which together with :execute and :open can do what you want using a relative position to go to a specific line (see):

nnoremap <silent> u :<c-u>execute '.-'.v:count '| open'<cr>

Ctrl-U is there to get rid of the range inserted if doing something like 10:. Change - to + to move down:

nnoremap <silent> U :<c-u>execute '.+'.v:count '| open'<cr>

Answered: Blink cursor

Mon, 03 Nov 2025 14:35:17 +0000

You could try a different colorscheme: https://github.com/vifm/vifm-colors

Answered: proposition for improving message : 1 file inserted

Mon, 03 Nov 2025 14:23:56 +0000

I have noticed the same issue. When I yank a file and then later use the p or the P key (see :help vifm-p), I am often a bit unsure if I hit the correct key, because the same message is displayed: 1 file inserted.

Open vifm with multiple tabs

Tue, 28 Oct 2025 14:59:51 +0000

Hi,

In case anyone wants to open a specified set of tabs when opening vifm but doesn't want to duplicate them when reloading

" Open vifm with three tabs per pane. The first tab of each pane is in current
" directory. Remaining are home directory.
"-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
if tabpagenr("$") == 1
    windo tabnew
    cd ~ ~
    windo tabnew
    cd ~ ~
    tabnext 1
    winc w
    tabnext 1
    winc w
endif

Sync tabs (like :sync for panes)

Tue, 28 Oct 2025 14:45:38 +0000

Hi,

I added commands to my $MYVIFMRC that can synchronize the view of the next tab to the current pane's directory or directory under the current cursor. Just posting it here in case it's useful for anyone else and in case anyone wants to suggest another alternative.

" Sync next tab to current directory
command! TabSync : let $DIR_CUR = "%d"
                \| tabnext
                \| cd "$DIR_CUR"
                \| tabprev
nnoremap <a-u> :TabSync<cr>
" Sync next tab to directory under cursor
command! TabSyncCursor : let $DIR_CUR = "%c"
                      \| tabnext
                      \| cd "$DIR_CUR"
                      \| tabprev
nnoremap <a-p> :TabSyncCursor<cr>

I use it in combination with other sync keymaps like below:

" Sync other pane to current directory
nnoremap <a-i> :sync<cr>
" Sync other pane to directory under cursor
nnoremap <a-o> :sync %c<cr>

Answered: catch-all preview

Tue, 28 Oct 2025 13:52:34 +0000

Looks correct to me, although you may want to change <text/plain> to <text/*>. It's also possible that some application-specific mime types need to be listed, you can look those up in Ctrl+G dialog when a file isn't previewed as you expect.

Answered: File highlight broken?

Fri, 10 Oct 2025 16:00:00 +0000

Highlighting based on file type has higher priority than highlighting based on file name/mime. You probably copied those files from a FAT or other Windows drive and they have executable bit set. Try running :chmod -x with one of those files under the cursor.

Answered: Open .xlsx file with sc-im

Mon, 06 Oct 2025 07:38:44 +0000

My Vifm opens .xlsx files with sc-im as expected. My configuration file contains the following line:

filextype {*.xls,*.xlsx,*.ods} sc-im %f

Maybe the & is causing your issue?

Which application appears first when running :file, sc-im or
LibreOffice?
Do you get the same Background Process Error: Device not configured error when you manually select sc-im from the :file menu?

Answered: Filter by file permission

Thu, 02 Oct 2025 13:26:13 +0000

No internal means for that, but custom view could be used to do such filtering:

command! perm :select * | !stat -c'%%%%A/%%%%n' %%f | grep '^.%a' | cut -d/ -f1 --complement %%u

perm rwx
perm .w.

Answered: Look behind in filetype regex pattern.

Mon, 29 Sep 2025 12:48:14 +0000

Hello,

Yes, POSIX regexps (man 7 regex) don't have positive/negative look behind/ahead, but you can still achieve the desired effect in Vifm. You even almost got it, just drop the comma:

filetype {*.tar.gz} command-1
filetype {*.gz}!{*.tar.gz} command-2

filetype {a},{b} command is just a shorthand for

filetype {a} command
filetype {b} command

That's basically a disjunction (logical OR). filetype {a}{b} command, on the other hand, is a conjunction (logical AND) of 2 patterns each of which can be negated individually.

Answered: cp -n warning popup

Sat, 13 Sep 2025 21:38:23 +0000

Hello,

Thanks for your kind words and bringing this to my attention, I wasn't aware coreutils had this change of behaviour and a new warning. Will have to take it into account.

Adding set syscalls (docs) to your configuration should address the issue by not using cp for copying.

Answered: Unsuccessful key binding (F3 and F4 keys)

Sat, 06 Sep 2025 10:44:45 +0000

I'm not sure what xterm-color terminfo entry is for and why it's defined this way, but it uses definitions of functional keys that don't match what XTerm is actually sending:

[~]$ infocmp xterm-color xterm-256color | grep 'kf[34]:'
        kf3: '\E[13~', '\EOR'.
        kf4: '\E[14~', '\EOS'.
[~]$ Ctrl+V F3: ^[OR
[~]$ Ctrl+V F4: ^[OS

Using xterm or xterm-256color should work fine. There may be a configuration option for XTerm which makes it compatible with xterm-color.

Answered: How to expand macros when adding bookmarks

Sat, 30 Aug 2025 10:09:57 +0000

If I understood you correctly:

nnoremap <silent> B :execute 'bmark!' '%c' expand('%c')<cr>

How to 'detatch' an edit?

Sun, 17 Aug 2025 22:18:12 +0000

If I want vifm to open the config file in a new window how would I do this?
Given these two lines, I'd want the bottom one to behave similarly to the top one.

" Edit vifmrc and apply settings after returning to vifm
nnoremap ,c :write | edit $MYVIFMRC | restart full<cr>

" Edit vifmrc in separate window, apply settings after returning to vifm
nnoremap ,C :write | :execute('foot nvim $MYVIFMRC') | :restart full <cr>

Previously, this used :!gvim with the --remote-tab-silent flag. This allowed for "detatching" the config file for editing while the original window remains in vifm.

Forgive me for the formatting, I am not familliar with how Q2A handles markdown

How to `ga` or `gA` every file and directory on open?

Sun, 17 Aug 2025 14:46:26 +0000

I'd like vifm to display filesize of every file/directory I can see at all times without having to vjj...gA.

Is this inadvisable? Would it slow vifm down considerably?

Thank you