Vim Is Much More Powerful Than You Think: Netrw

2026-01-21T00:00:00+00:00

I've been using Neovim for almost 3 years now, and I only used it's built-in Netrw</kbd> to navigate my project. I always thought Netrw is just a simple file explorer, allowing you to see directories and move between them. That's all. No tree, no copy pasting or moving files, no opening files in other applications. Man, was I wrong.

Of course I knew about the R</kbd> key which allows you to rename files/dirs, %</kbd> which allows you to create new file,D</kbd> that removes the file/dir and things like that. But no more to be honest. I would just do !thunar .&</code> when things got a bit complicated.

It never amazes me that no matter how much I use and learn about Neovim or Vim, there's still a lot that I don't know. Today I accidentally pressed i</kbd> in Netrw and saw that it has a tree view of your directories. The thing I was most missing from Netrw and it was right there!

You can learn everything about it just by pressing <F1></kbd> and going through the manual, but here's a quick list.

Cool shortcuts</a> </h2> Listing/View <c-l></kbd> Causes Netrw to refresh the directory listing |netrw-ctrl-l|</li> i</kbd> Cycle between thin, long, wide, and tree listings |netrw-i|</li> gn</kbd> Make top of tree the directory below the cursor |netrw-gn|</li> I</kbd> Toggle the displaying of the banner |netrw-I|</li> gh</kbd> Quick hide/unhide of dot-files |netrw-gh|</li> </ul> </li> Marking mf</kbd> Mark a file |netrw-mf|</li> mt</kbd> Current browsing directory becomes markfile target |netrw-mt|</li> mu</kbd> Unmark all marked files |netrw-mu|</li> mc</kbd> Copy marked files to marked-file target directory |netrw-mc|</li> md</kbd> Apply diff to marked files (up to 3) |netrw-md|</li> mg</kbd> Apply vimgrep</code> to marked files |netrw-mg|</li> mr</kbd> Mark files using a shell-style |regexp| |netrw-mr|</li> mv</kbd> Apply arbitrary vim command to marked files |netrw-mv|</li> mx</kbd> Apply arbitrary shell command to marked files |netrw-mx|</li> mz</kbd> Compress/decompress marked files |netrw-mz|</li> p</kbd> Preview the file |netrw-p|</li> </ul> </li> CRUD d</kbd> Make a directory |netrw-d|</li> D</kbd> Attempt to remove the file(s)/directory(ies) |netrw-D|</li> R</kbd> Rename the designated file(s)/directory(ies) |netrw-R|</li> %</kbd> Open a new file in netrw's current directory |netrw-%|</li> x</kbd> View file with an associated program (e.g. open HTML file in your browser)</li> </ul> </li> Navigation -</kbd> Makes Netrw go up one directory |netrw--|</li> cd</kbd> Make browsing directory the current directory |netrw-cd|</li> t</kbd> Enter the file/directory under the cursor in a new tab |netrw-t|</li> v</kbd> Enter the file/directory under the cursor in a new browser window. A vertical split is used.</li> Bookmarking mb</kbd> Bookmark current directory |netrw-mb|</li> mB</kbd> Delete bookmark of current directory |netrw-mB|</li> qb</kbd> List bookmarked directories and history |netrw-qb|</li> {number}</code>gb</kbd> Go to previous bookmarked directory (or the bookmark number from qb</kbd>) |netrw-gb|</li> </ul> </li> </ul> </li> </ul> Remote Files</a> </h2> This is honestly so awesome. You can just communicate with your remote files from SCP, FTP, SSH, Rsync, curl, dav etc. I will mostly use this for working on my servers. If you use SSH keys to authenticate to your server, it will be as simple as nvim rsync://[user]@[host]/[filepath]</code> For example: nvim scp://[user]@[host]//opt/docker-compose-files/</code> If you want to navigate a dir, add a / at the end of the filepath. If your SSH key has a password, in your terminal do: ssh-agent $SHELL ssh-add // this will ask you pass once nvim rsync://[host]/[filepath]</code></pre> If you don't have SSH on your destination but have FTP/SFTP do: nvim sftp://[user]@[host]/path/to/file</code> NOTE: To be honest I haven't been able to actually work with files in remote sessions with nvim. I haven't gotten much time to troubleshoot it, but I will update with my experiences. If you know how to work with remote file systems, contact me</a>

alavi.me - vim/nvim

Vim Is Much More Powerful Than You Think: Netrw