CODEWITHSUNDEEP
vim
Eman
Eman

Reputation: 6721

Where is my .vimrc file?

I have been using Vim, and I would really like to save my settings. The problem I am having is that I cannot find my .vimrc file, and it is not in the standard /home/user/.vimrc location. How might I find this file?

Upvotes: 606

Views: 893008

Answers (23)

geoidesic
geoidesic

Reputation: 5063

If you're using vi instead of vim then it's ~/.virc you want to edit. Tested on Alma Linux 9

I found this by using vi --version which then informed me where the user vimrc file: location was.

Upvotes: 1

Steve Jorgensen
Steve Jorgensen

Reputation: 12401

I don't know about in other versions of Vim, but in Vim 9.0, the output of vim --version includes great information about this. On my system, the output includes the following:

   system vimrc file: "$VIM/vimrc"
     user vimrc file: "$HOME/.vimrc"
 2nd user vimrc file: "~/.vim/vimrc"
      user exrc file: "$HOME/.exrc"
       defaults file: "$VIMRUNTIME/defaults.vim"
  fall-back for $VIM: "/usr/share/vim"

Upvotes: 5

jdempcy
jdempcy

Reputation: 134

I was attempting to edit my .vimrc file and this worked for me (macOS Ventura 13.0.1 December 2022).

touch ~/.vimrc
vim ~/.vimrc

I was then able to edit the file to my heart's content, and the next time I ran vim it picked up my changes.

Upvotes: 0

Bishop
Bishop

Reputation: 21

Unfortunately, there are so many answers and none of them helped me.

Until I ran

:checkhealth

in vim and found out that in my case, the vim config file should be named init.vim (under ~/.config/nvim/init.vim).

Upvotes: 2

Franco Díaz
Franco Díaz

Reputation: 1

the name of the file in my system, installed with Garuda Linux is file:///etc/xdg/nvim/sysinit.vim, so try to find this file and add your custom changes.

Upvotes: 0

Abhiveer Singh
Abhiveer Singh

Reputation: 1

if in Windows, it could be in your C directory under Program Files(x86) in the folder "vim"

Upvotes: -2

HoldOffHunger
HoldOffHunger

Reputation: 20948

Where is the .vimrc file? It depends on the OS. As you can see, you were looking for /home/$user/.vimrc, which probably means you are using BSD / Linux. Here are the locations for each OS...

  • BSD / Linux : /home/$user/.vimrc
  • SunOS / Solaris : /export/home/$user/.vimrc
  • MacOS : /Users/$user/.vimrc
  • Android : /data/media/$userid/.vimrc
  • Unix : $root/home/$user/.vimrc
  • AT&T Unix : $root/usr/$user/.vimrc
  • Unix-Derived :

If it doesn't exist, create it with ~/.vimrc.

In addition, the root user has their own special .vimrc file, which can be found in /root/.vimrc on BSD / Linux (and in equivalent locations for the other OS's).

The location is set in the $HOME variable, which is always set in Linux environments. (Source: StackExchange->Unix & Linux.)

Upvotes: 8

blckCoach
blckCoach

Reputation: 336

actually you have one vimrc in

/etc/vimrc

when you edit something in there the changes will effect all users
if you don't want that you can create a local vimrc in

~/.vimrc

the changes here will only effect the one user

Upvotes: 8

user2138149
user2138149

Reputation: 17414

Useful Information can be obtained using the find command

find / -iname "*vimrc*" -type f 2>/dev/null

There are many answers already, but it can sometimes be useful to simply run a "find" for anything containing the name "vimrc".

The reason is that this will show you what files you actualy have available on the system currently, rather than what you might put on your system. (The information for which you would obtain from :version as explained in other answers.)

Example result on my system

On my system this produces

/usr/share/vim/vim82/vimrc_example.vim
/usr/share/vim/vim82/gvimrc_example.vim
/etc/vim/gvimrc
/etc/vim/vimrc
/etc/vim/vimrc.tiny

Which is quite useful because it tells us that there are 2 example files installed in the share directorys for both gvim and vim, and that there are also some system-wide config files below /etc/.

On my system, I also have a file at ~/.vimrc but this does not appear in this list because it is a link to another file, stored under ~/Linux-Config. But you won't have this directory, it's specific to machines I use on my own network.

Detailed Explanation of find syntax used

Explanation:

  • find starting at the root directory / (find works recursively)
  • anything containing the case insensitive regex *vimrc* which means any name with vimrc (case insensitive) in it somewhere, can be preceeded or followed by anything or nothing (*)
  • type = files (not directory/symlink etc)
  • throw all errors to /dev/null otherwise the output is spammed with unreadable errors from /proc

Upvotes: 10

Philia Fan
Philia Fan

Reputation: 4498

These methods work, if you already have a .vimrc file:

:scriptnames list all the .vim files that Vim loaded for you, including your .vimrc file.

:e $MYVIMRC open & edit the current .vimrc that you are using, then use Ctrl + G to view the path in status bar.

Upvotes: 418

droid192
droid192

Reputation: 2242

on unix vim --version tells you the various locations of the vim config files :

   system vimrc file: "$VIM/vimrc"
     user vimrc file: "$HOME/.vimrc"
 2nd user vimrc file: "~/.vim/vimrc"
      user exrc file: "$HOME/.exrc"
       defaults file: "$VIMRUNTIME/defaults.vim"
  fall-back for $VIM: "/usr/share/vim"

Upvotes: 25

Laurence Gonsalves
Laurence Gonsalves

Reputation: 143334

Short answer:

To create your vimrc, start up Vim and do one of the following:

:e $HOME/.vimrc  " on Unix, Mac or OS/2

:e $HOME/_vimrc  " on Windows

:e s:.vimrc      " on Amiga

Insert the settings you want, and save the file.

Note that exisitence of this file will disable the compatible option. See below for details.

Long answer:

There are two kinds of vimrc:

  • the user vimrc in $HOME
  • the system vimrc in $VIM (on Amiga systems, s:.vimrc is considered a user vimrc)

The user vimrc file often does not exist until created by the user. If you cannot find $HOME/.vimrc (or $HOME/_vimrc on Windows) then you can, and probably should, just create it.

The system vimrc should normally be left unmodified and is located in the $VIM* directory. The system vimrc is not a good place you keep your personal settings. If you modify this file your changes may be overwritten if you ever upgrade Vim. Also, changes here will affect other users on a multi-user system. In most cases, settings in the user vimrc will override settings in the system vimrc.

From :help vimrc:

A file that contains initialization commands is called a "vimrc" file. Each line in a vimrc file is executed as an Ex command line. It is sometimes also referred to as "exrc" file. They are the same type of file, but "exrc" is what Vi always used, "vimrc" is a Vim specific name. Also see |vimrc-intro|.

Places for your personal initializations:

    Unix            $HOME/.vimrc or $HOME/.vim/vimrc
    OS/2            $HOME/.vimrc, $HOME/vimfiles/vimrc
                    or $VIM/.vimrc (or _vimrc)
    MS-Windows      $HOME/_vimrc, $HOME/vimfiles/vimrc
                    or $VIM/_vimrc
    Amiga           s:.vimrc, home:.vimrc, home:vimfiles:vimrc
                    or $VIM/.vimrc

The files are searched in the order specified above and only the first one that is found is read.

(MacOS counts as Unix for the above.)

Note that the mere existence of a user vimrc will change Vim's behavior by turning off the compatible option. From :help compatible-default:

When Vim starts, the 'compatible' option is on. This will be used when Vim starts its initializations. But as soon as a user vimrc file is found, or a vimrc file in the current directory, or the "VIMINIT" environment variable is set, it will be set to 'nocompatible'. This has the side effect of setting or resetting other options (see 'compatible'). But only the options that have not been set or reset will be changed.

* $VIM may not be set in your shell, but is always set inside Vim. If you want to see what it's set to, start up Vim and use the command :echo $VIM

Upvotes: 128

hihell
hihell

Reputation: 946

As additional information, mostly in macOS, the .vimrc file is located at directory:

/usr/share/vim/.vimrc

Upvotes: 31

deb2fast
deb2fast

Reputation: 1000

I tried everything in the previous answer and couldn't find a .vimrc file, so I had to make one.

I copied the example file, cp vimrc_example.vim ~/.vimrc.

I had to create the file, copying from /usr/share/vim/vim74/vimrc_example.vim to ~/.vimrc. Those were the instructions in the vimrc_example file.

My solution is for Unix for other operating systems. According to the Vim documentation, your destination path should be as follows:

    For Unix and OS/2   : ~/.vimrc
    For Amiga           : s:.vimrc
    For MS-DOS and Win32: $VIM\_vimrc
    For OpenVMS         : sys$login:.vimrc

Upvotes: 3

Enrique Saez
Enrique Saez

Reputation: 2700

In SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) and openSUSE the global one is located at /etc/vimrc.

To edit it, simply do vi /etc/vimrc.

Upvotes: 2

mythicalcoder
mythicalcoder

Reputation: 3301

The vimrc file in Ubuntu (12.04 (Precise Pangolin)): I tried :scriptnames in Vim, and it shows both /usr/share/vim/vimrc and ~/.vimrc.

But I had manually created ~/.vimrc.

Upvotes: 2

Jinggang
Jinggang

Reputation: 431

I'd like to share how I set showing the line number as the default on Mac.

  1. In a terminal, type cd. This will help you go to the home folder.
  2. In the terminal, type vi .vimrc. This will create an empty vimrc system file which you want to use.
  3. In the file, type set number, and then hit Esc on the keyboard and type in :wq. This will set the line number shown in the default setting file vimrc and save it.
  4. vi something to see if this works. If not, try to restart the terminal completely.

If in a terminal, type in cd /usr/share/vim/, go to that folder, and type in ls. You can directly see a file named vimrc. But it's a system file that says read only. I feel it's not a good idea to try modify it. So following the above steps to create a vimrc by yourself is better. It worked for me.

Upvotes: 6

Aaron
Aaron

Reputation: 543

For whatever reason, these answers didn't quite work for me. This is what worked for me instead:

In Vim, the :version command gives you the paths of system and user vimrc and gvimrc files (among other things), and the output looks something like this:

 system vimrc file: "$VIM/vimrc"
   user vimrc file: "$HOME/.vimrc"
    user exrc file: "$HOME/.exrc"
system gvimrc file: "$VIM/gvimrc"
  user gvimrc file: "$HOME/.gvimrc"

The one you want is user vimrc file: "$HOME/.vimrc"

So to edit the file: vim $HOME/.vimrc

Source: Open vimrc file

Upvotes: 22

Jason
Jason

Reputation: 2140

From cmd (Windows):

C\Users\You> `vim foo.txt`

Now in Vim, enter command mode by typing: ":" (i.e. Shift + ;) 

:tabedit $HOME/.vimrc

Upvotes: 1

user4640261
user4640261

Reputation:

Open Vim, and in normal mode type:

:echo $VIM

Upvotes: 17

AlG
AlG

Reputation: 15167

You need to create it. In most installations I've used it hasn't been created by default.

You usually create it as ~/.vimrc.

Upvotes: 690

Ben
Ben

Reputation: 57318

Here are a few more tips:

  • In Arch Linux the global one is at /etc/vimrc. There are some comments in there with helpful details.

  • Since the filename starts with a ., it's hidden unless you use ls -a to show ALL files.

  • Typing :version while in Vim will show you a bunch of interesting information including the file location.

  • If you're not sure what ~/.vimrc means look at this question.

Upvotes: 7

Rook
Rook

Reputation: 62588

:echo($MYVIMRC)

will give you the location of your .vimrc file.

:e $MYVIMRC

will open it.

Upvotes: 28

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