How to Install Vim Editor in MacOS?

Vim is an open-source software developed by “Bram Moolenaar” in 1991. Vim, short for “Vi IMproved,” is a highly customizable and powerful text editor that is most commonly used by developers, system administrators, writers, and anyone who works extensively with text files.

Vim is created as an updated version of the Vi editor, Vim has evolved over the years to become one of the most popular and widely used text editors in the software development community.

In this article, we will learn how to install Vim on MacOS.

How to Install Vim Editor in MacOS?

Step 1: Prerequisites – HomeBrew

Homebrew is a package manager used for installing software to Mac systems and Linux systems,. HomeBrew should be pre-installed on your MacOS. If not installed, check out this detailed article on Home Brew installation on MacOS.

Step 2: Install Vim Using Home Brew

To install Vim using Home Brew use following command in the terminal of mac

brew install vim

brew install vim

This command will install vim and its all dependencies. To use Vim like a pro master these Basic Vim Commands.

Step 3: Verifying Vim

To verify whether Vim is installed or not use the following commad in the terminal to check vim version

vim -version

vim -version

After that you can use “vim <file-name>” you will get vim editor screen and version details of vim as shown in the below screenshot

vim editor screen

Now, you use the vim text editor for your programming, content writing or anything else. We now successfully installed vim in MacOs.

Conclusion

Installing Vim on macOS provides users with a very powerful text editing experience, enabling them to efficiently work with different types of text files and programming languages like Java, C, C++ etc. Whether for coding, writing, or system administration tasks, Vim remains as a recommended choice for developers for its efficiency and extensibility.

FAQs: How to Install Vim Editor in MacOS?

How do I edit in Vim on Mac?

To edit Vim on Mac, follow as directed.

• 1. Open Terminal in your system
• 2. Type “vim” followed by the name of the file you want to edit.
• 3. Press “i” to enter insert mode in vim, make changes, then press “Esc” followed by “:wq” (write and quit) to save and quit.

How to update the Vim command line in MacOS?

Open the terminal in your system and type the following command to upgrade the vim

Command: “brew update && brew upgrade vim”.

How to uninstall/ turn off vim in MacOS?

Open the terminal in your system and type the following command to uninstall

Command: brew uninstall

How do I restore a previous version of Vim?

Open the terminal in your system and type the following system

Command: brew install vim@<mention-previous-version>