Announcement

For a more lightweight, easier-to-use alternative, check out the author's new, work-in-progress plugin, Leap. It is a streamlined, refined successor of Lightspeed, incorporating all the lessons learned from the predecessor, achieving much better balance between speed, simplicity (of both interface and implementation) and intuitiveness.

🌌 lightspeed.nvim

Lightspeed is a motion plugin for Neovim, with a relatively small interface and lots of innovative ideas, that allow for making on-screen movements with yet unprecedented ease and efficiency. The aim is to maximize speed while minimizing mental effort and breaks in the flow, providing a distractionless experience, that should feel as "native" as possible.

The gist in 30 secs

With Lightspeed you can jump to any positions in the visible window area by entering a 2-character search pattern, and then optionally a "label" character for choosing among multiple matches. The plugin aims to substitute all native commands for in-window navigation (/, ?, gg, f, etc.) with a uniform, minimal set of atomic (repeatable), multi-axis motions.

So far we have more or less described what vim-sneak does. The game-changing idea in Lightspeed is its "clairvoyant" ability: it maps possible futures, and shows you which keys you will need to press before you actually need to do that, so despite the use of target labels, you can keep typing in a continuous manner. You can almost always reach the destination by at most - and very often less than - four keystrokes in total, that can be typed in one go.

Video tutorial

If this sounds cool enough, read on, or watch the 6-minute introductory video by DevOnDuty - a very good entry point, showing the basic usage with straightforward, easy to understand explanations.

Sky chart

• Evolution and design
• An in-depth introduction of the key features
• Getting started
• Usage
• Configuration
• Why is there no feature X or Y?
• Contributing
• Inspired by

Quick links (FAQ)

• EasyMotion/Hop-style config
• Suggestions for colorscheme integrations
• Enforce the default highlighting if a colorscheme messes things up
• Multi-line f/t motions VS macros and :normal
• Using the plugin together with vim-surround

🧬 Evolution and design

Composite motions do not compose

Everyone has been taught that the "Vim way" of reaching distant points in the window is using combinations of primitive motions: 8jfx;;. The pipelining instinct is so deeply ingrained in our Vim-infected mindsets, that many of us tend to forget that this approach has evolved merely as a consequence of the limitations of the interface, and is not some divinely decreed, superior way of doing things; while the "controls as language" paradigm is an ingenious aspect of Vim in general, "compound sentences" make no sense for doing arbitrary jumps between A and B, that should ideally be atomic.

Railways versus jetpacks

EasyMotion attempted to improve the situation by introducing many new "atoms" - direct routes to a lot of specific targets. That plugin and its derivatives (Hop, or Avy for Emacs) are a bit like convoluted railway networks, with pre-built stations: each time you have to think about which train to take, which exit point is the closest to your goal, etc. In short, they buy speed for cognitive load - a questionable bargain.

Sneak's approach, however, with its sole focus on using 2-character search patterns for targeting, and later combining that with the labeling method inspired by EasyMotion, felt close to perfect at its time. A user of Sneak embraces a philosophy that is just the opposite of above: you barely need to think about motions anymore - "sneaking" gets you everywhere you need to be, with maximal precision. It is like having a jetpack on you all the time.

Always a step ahead of you

Lightspeed takes the next logical step, and eliminates yet more cognitive overhead, unnecessary keystrokes or interruptions, by blurring the boundary between one- and two-character search. The idea is to process the input incrementally - analyzing the available information after each keystroke, to assist the user and offer shortcuts:

• jump based on partial input: if the character is unique in the search direction, you will automatically jump after the first input (these characters are highlighted beforehand, so this is never too surprising)
• shortcut-labels: for some matches, it is possible to use the target label right after the first input, as if doing 1-character search
• ahead-of-time displayed target labels: in any case, you will see the label right after the first input, so once you need to type it, your brain will already have processed it

The last one is probably the biggest game-changer, beating the major problem of all other general-purpose motion plugins - the frustrating momentary pause between entering your search pattern and selecting the target. Once you try it, you will never look back.

To see these features in action, check the screen recordings in the in-depth introduction below.

Universal motions

To make the suite complete, Lightspeed implements enhanced f/t-like motions working over multiple lines, with same-key repeat available, and a so-called x-mode, providing exclusive/inclusive variations for 2-character search. Together the four bi-directional motions (s/x/f/t) make it possible to reach and operate on the whole window area with high efficiency in all situations when there is no obvious atomic alternative - like w, {, or % - available.

Other improvements and quality-of-life features

• smart shifting between Sneak/EasyMotion mode - the plugin automatically jumps to the first match if the remaining matches can be covered by a limited set of "safe" target labels, but stays in place, and switches to an extended, more comfortable label set otherwise
• linewise operations are possible via the same interface, by targeting (potentially off-screen) EOL characters
• uniform repeat interface, and flawless dot-repeat support for operators (with repeat.vim installed)
• bidirectional search (opt-in)
• cross-window motions

High-level guiding principles

"Some people . . . like tons of features, but experienced users really care about cohesion, conceptual integrity, and reliability. I think of [the latter] as the @tpope school." (justinmk)

• 80/20: focus on features that are applicable in all contexts - micro-improvements to the most frequent tasks accumulate more savings than vanity features that turn out to be rarely needed in practice

• Design is making decisions: mitigate choice paralysis for the user, regarding both usage (the kinds of targeting methods provided) and configuration options

• Sharpen the saw: the plugin should feel a natural extension to the core, with an interplay as seamless and intuitive as possible

📚 An in-depth introduction of the key features

Jump on partial input

If you enter a character that is the only match in the search direction, Lightspeed jumps to it directly, without waiting for a second input. These unique characters are highlighted beforehand; quick-scope is based on a similar idea, but the intent here is not a "choose me!"-kind of preliminary orientation (the assumption is that you know where you want to go), more like giving feedback for your brain while you type.

To further mitigate accidents, a short timeout is set by default, until the second character in the pair (and only that) is "swallowed". In operator-pending mode, the operated area gets a temporary highlight until the next character is entered.

Ahead-of-time labeling

Target labels are shown ahead of time, right after typing the first input character. This means you can often type without any serious break in the flow, almost as if using 3-character search. It is a micro-optimisation, but can mean the world - Lightspeed simply feels different because of this.

Shortcuts

Made possible by the above, Lightspeed has the concept of "shortcutable" positions, where the assigned label itself is enough to determine the target: those you can reach via typing the label character right after the first input, bypassing the second one. This case is surprisingly frequent in practice, and in case of harder-to-type sequences, when you're not rushing with 200+ CPM, can work really well.

You can see that "shortcuts" are highlighted differently (with a background color):

Note that this is just an alternative: you do not have to watch out for these, and nothing bad happens if you type the second input as normal, and then type the label to reach the target. But in my experience, you can often guess whether the targeted position will be shortcutable, e.g. if there is a character that seems to be consistently followed by the same other character in the window (simple examples: a comment leader, e.g. - in Lua, or an < if there are lots of <Plug> forms in a section of a Vim config file).

Grouping matches by distance

When there is a large number of matches, we cycle through groups instead of trying to label everything at once (just like Sneak does it). However, the immediate next group is always shown ahead of time too, with a different color, so your brain has a bit of time to process the label, even in case of a distant group. If the target is right in the second group, you don't even have to think in terms of "switching groups" - a blue label should rather be thought of as a <space>-prefixed, 2-character label. That means we have 2 * number-of-labels targets right away that are in the efficiently-reachable/low-cognitive-load range.

Note that Lightspeed keeps the invariant that a label consists of exactly one character, that should always stay in the same position, once appeared. (No rolling/flashing sequence of labels, like in case of Hop/EasyMotion.)

🚀 Getting started

Requirements

• Neovim >= 0.7.0

Dependencies

• repeat.vim is required for the dot-repeat functionality to work as intended.

Installation

packer

use 'ggandor/lightspeed.nvim'

vim-plug

Plug 'ggandor/lightspeed.nvim'

🏹 Usage

"Just relax and let your mind go blank" - Lightspeed thinks for you. It always presents information before it is actually needed.

2-character search (s/x)

Without further ado, let's cut to the chase, and learn by doing. (Permalink to the file, if you want to follow along.)

The search is invoked with s in the forward direction, and S in the backward direction. Let's press s:

You can see that the search area is greyed out, and you can also see some characters highlighted. Those are characters with only one occurrence, and you can jump to them by simply typing the given character.

Let's target some word containing me. After entering the letter m, the plugin processes all bigrams starting with it, and from here on, you have all the visual information you need to reach your specific target:

Now type e. If you aimed for the first match (in frame_minheight), you are good to go, just continue the work! (The labels for the subsequent matches of me remain visible until the next keypress, but they are carefully chosen "safe" letters, guaranteed to not interfere with your following editing command.) If you aimed for some other match, then type the label, for example u, and move on to that.

An alternative could have been using a shortcut - skipping the second pattern character (e in our case), and just typing the label, if it has an inverse highlight. This is only practical if the first pattern character is hard to type - it is not worth it to deliberately pause and wait for a potential shortcut, instead of going with the flow. Shortcuts can always be used as normal labels - skipping is optional.

To show the last important feature, let's zoom out a bit, and target the struct member on the line available = oldwin->w_frame->fr_height; near the bottom, using the pattern fr, by first pressing s, and then f:

The blue labels indicate the "secondary" group of matches, where we start to reuse the available labels for a given pair (s, f, n... again). You can reach those by prefixing the label with <space>, that switches to the subsequent match group. For example, to jump to the "blue" j target, you should now press r<space>j. In very rare cases, if the large number of matches cannot be covered even by two label groups, you might need to press <space> multiple times, until you see the target labeled, first with blue, and then, after one more <space>, red.

To summarize, here is the general flow again (in Normal and Visual mode, with the default settings):

s|S char1 (char2|shortcut)? (<space>|<tab>)* label?

That is,

• invoke in the forward (s) or backward (S) direction
• enter the first character of the search pattern (might short-circuit after this, if the character is unique in the search direction)
  • the "beacons" are lit at this point; all potential matches are labeled (char1 + ?)
• finish the motion by selecting a shortcut, or enter the second character of the search pattern (might short-circuit after this, if there is only one match)
  • certain beacons are extinguished; only char1 + char2 matches remain
  • the cursor automatically jumps to the first match if there are enough "safe" labels; pressing any other key than a group-switch or a target label exits the plugin now
• optionally cycle through the groups of matches that can be labeled at once
• choose a labeled target to jump to (in the current group)

When matches are too close to each other

If a match is too close to the next one, the beacon should be "squeezed" into the original 2-column box of the match; that is, on top of an A B match, a B label pair will appear, where the first field shows the character masked by the label (it is shifted left by a column) - those are the brownish characters you can see on some of the screenshots. In the most extreme case, the B field can even be overlapped by the label of another match, but only until the second input has not been entered - after that, all overlapped matches are guaranteed to become uncovered.

Operator-pending mode

In Operator-pending mode, there are two different (pairs of) motions available, providing the necessary additional comfort and precision, since in that case we are targeting exact positions, and can only aim once, without the means of easy correction.

z/Z are the equivalents of Normal/Visual s/S, and they follow the semantics of / and ? in terms of cursor placement and inclusive/exclusive operational behaviour, including forced motion types (:h forced-motion):

ab···|                    |···ab
█████·  ←  Zab    zab  →  ████ab
██████  ← vZab    vzab →  █████b

The mnemonic for X-mode could be extend/exclude (corresponding to x/X). It provides missing variants for the two directions:

ab···|                    |···ab
ab███·  ←  Xab    xab  →  ██████
ab████  ← vXab    vxab →  █████b

As you can see from the figure, x goes to the end of the match, including it in the operation, while X stops just before - in an absolute sense, after - the end of the match (the equivalent of T for two-character search). In simpler terms: in X-mode, the relevant edge of the operated area gets an offset of +2.

The assignment of z and x seems a sensible default, considering that those keys are free in O-P mode, and the handy visual mnemonic that x is physically to the right of z on a QWERTY keyboard (think about "pulling" the cursor forward). We are also acknowledging that "surround" plugins in Operator-pending mode may benefit more from being able to use the s/S keypair than general-purpose motion plugins like Lightspeed.

Cross-window motions

gs and gS are like s/S, but they search in the successor/predecessor windows in the window tree of the current tab page. In practical terms: gs scans downwards/rightwards, while gS upwards/leftwards. In exceptional cases, the direction can be switched on the fly with tab after invocation.

Bidirectional search

By mapping to the special keys <Plug>Lightspeed_omni_s and <Plug>Lightspeed_omni_gs, you can search in the whole window or tab page, instead of just a given direction. In this case, the matches are sorted by their screen distance from the cursor, advancing in concentric circles. This is a very different mental model, but has its own merits too.

1-character search (f/t)

Lightspeed also overrides the native f/F/t/T motions with enhanced versions that work over multiple lines. In all other respects they behave the same way as the native ones.

Matching line breaks (linewise motions)

The newline character is represented by <enter> in search patterns. For example, f<enter> is equivalent to $, and will move the cursor to the end of the line. s<enter> will label all EOL positions, including off-screen ones (labeled as <{label} or {label}>), providing an easy way to move to blank lines. Likewise, a character before EOL can be targeted by s{char}<enter> (\n in the match is highlighted as ¬ by default).

Repeating motions

Repeating in Lightspeed works in a uniform way across all motions - all of the following methods (and even combinations of them) are valid options.

Note that for s/x motions the labels will remain available during the whole time, even after entering instant-repeat mode, if the "safe" label set is in use.

"Instant" repeat (after jumping)

• In Normal and Visual mode, the motions can be repeated by pressing the corresponding trigger key - s, f, t - again. (They continue in the original direction, whether it was forward or backward.) S, F and T, on the other hand, always revert the previous repeat. Note that in the case of T (or X, if mapped), this results in a different, and presumably more useful behaviour than what you are used to in clever-f and Sneak: it does not repeat the search in the reverse direction, but puts the cursor back to its previous position - before the previous match -, allowing for an easy correction when you accidentally overshoot your target.

• For f/t-search, there is a special, opt-in repeat mode: pressing the target character again can also repeat the motion (opts.repeat_ft_with_target_char).

"Cold" repeat

• Pressing <backspace> after invoking any of Lightspeed's motions searches with the previous input (1- and 2-character searches are saved separately). Subsequent keystrokes of <backspace> move on to the next match (that is, it invokes "instant-repeat" mode), while <tab> reverts (just like S/F/T).

• There are also dedicated <Plug> keys available for repeating the two search modes. ; and , are mapped to f/t repeat by default (following the native behaviour), but it might be a good idea to remap them to repeat s/x. If you would like to set them to repeat the last Lightspeed motion (whether it was s/x or f/t), see :h lightspeed-custom-mappings. Just like above, subsequent keystrokes move on to the next match, while the opposite key reverts the previous motion.

Dot-repeat

Dot-repeat aims to behave in the most intuitive way in different situations - on special cases, see :h lightspeed-dot-repeat.

See also

For more details, see the docs (:h lightspeed-usage, :h lightspeed-default-mappings), and the in-depth introduction.

🔧 Configuration

Lightspeed exposes a configuration table (opts), that can be set directly, or via a setup function that updates the current settings with the values given in its argument table.

-- NOTE: This is just illustration - there is no need to copy/paste the
-- defaults, or call `setup` at all, if you do not want to change anything.

require'lightspeed'.setup {
  ignore_case = false,
  exit_after_idle_msecs = { unlabeled = nil, labeled = nil },
  --- s/x ---
  jump_to_unique_chars = { safety_timeout = 400 },
  match_only_the_start_of_same_char_seqs = true,
  force_beacons_into_match_width = false,
  -- Display characters in a custom way in the highlighted matches.
  substitute_chars = { ['\r'] = '¬', },
  -- Leaving the appropriate list empty effectively disables "smart" mode,
  -- and forces auto-jump to be on or off.
  safe_labels = { . . . },
  labels = { . . . },
  -- These keys are captured directly by the plugin at runtime.
  special_keys = {
    next_match_group = '<space>',
    prev_match_group = '<tab>',
  },
  --- f/t ---
  limit_ft_matches = 4,
  repeat_ft_with_target_char = false,
}

For a detailed description of the available options, see the docs: :h lightspeed-config.

You can also set options individually from the command line:

lua require'lightspeed'.opts.jump_to_unique_chars = false

EasyMotion/Hop-style config

By default, Lightspeed is tuned for maximum speed, especially for close and midrange movements, but the cost of this is increased visual noise and a bit more hectic experience. For a "calmer" style of navigation, similar to using Hop or EasyMotion, add the following two lines to your config:

jump_to_unique_chars = false,
safe_labels = {}

These disable the two most obtrusive automagic features (jumping to unique characters, and to the first 2-character match), while you can still enjoy Lightspeed's unique advantage of making the labels visible right as you type.

You might also want to use bidirectional search instead of the default s/S - for that, see :h lightspeed-custom-mappings.

Keymaps

Lightspeed aims to be part of an "extended native" layer, similar to such canonized Vim plugins like surround.vim or targets.vim. Therefore it provides carefully thought-out defaults, mapping to the following keys: s, S (Normal and Visual mode), gs, gS (Normal mode), z, Z, x, X (Operator-pending mode), and - obviously, enhancing the built-in motions - f, F, t, T, ;, , (all modes). See :h lightspeed-default-mappings for details.

That said, Lightspeed will check for conflicts with any custom mappings created by you or other plugins, and will not overwrite them, unless explicitly told so. To set alternative keymaps, you can use the <Plug> keys listed in :h lightspeed-custom-mappings.

Overridden native keymaps (s/S/gs)

Basic motions, like Lightspeed jumps, should have the absolute least friction among all commands, since they are the most frequent.

• s: for replacing one character, r is the adequate choice; for the rare case when one wants to continue inserting after that, using cl is more than fine
• S: cc is comfortable enough, and it is consistent with yy and dd
• gs: probably no one misses this shortcut for the :sleep command

Setting keys to repeat the last lightspeed motion (s/x/f/t)

That can be achieved easily with autocommands and expression mappings. See :h lightspeed-custom-mappings.

Using the repeat keys for instant repeat only

Likewise, see :h lightspeed-custom-mappings for an example snippet.

Disabling the default keymaps

See :h lightspeed-disable-default-mappings.

User events

Lightspeed triggers User events on entering/exiting, so that you can set up autocommands, e.g. to change the values of some editor options while the plugin is active. For details, check :h lightspeed-events.

Highlight groups

For customizing the highlight colors, see :h lightspeed-highlight. If you are a colorscheme author/maintainer, please also check out the appropriate guide.

In case you - as a user - are not happy with a certain colorscheme's integration, you could force reloading the default settings by calling lightspeed.init_highlight(true). The call can even be wrapped in an autocommand to automatically re-init on every colorscheme change:

autocmd ColorScheme * lua require'lightspeed'.init_highlight(true)

This can be tweaked further, you could e.g. check the actual colorscheme, and only execute for certain ones, etc.

Notes

• While the plugin is active, the actual cursor is down on the command line, but its position in the window is kept highlighted, using the attributes of the built-in Cursor highlight group - should you experience any issues, you should check the state of that first. Alternatively, you can tweak the LightspeedCursor group, to highlight the cursor in a custom way.

• If you are using VSCode with NeoVim extension, you need to set hi LightspeedCursor gui=reverse in your nvim config to support the fake cursor and make Lightspeed work.

• The otherwise useful multiline scoping of f/F/t/T can be undesirable when recording macros or executing :normal. This is being worked on, but as an API change, it should be thought through carefully. In the meantime, here is a rather elegant workaround for macros by rktjmp (caveat: this causes a problem for same-key repeat):

  nmap <expr> f reg_recording() . reg_executing() == "" ? "<Plug>Lightspeed_f" : "f"
  nmap <expr> F reg_recording() . reg_executing() == "" ? "<Plug>Lightspeed_F" : "F"
  nmap <expr> t reg_recording() . reg_executing() == "" ? "<Plug>Lightspeed_t" : "t"
  nmap <expr> T reg_recording() . reg_executing() == "" ? "<Plug>Lightspeed_T" : "T"

  For :normal, you could use the bang-version :normal!, although that disables all custom mappings, so that is only a half-measure.

❔ Why is there no feature X or Y?

Smart case-sensitivity?

See #64. It is unfortunately impossible for this plugin, by design. (Because of ahead-of-time labeling, it would require showing two different labels - corresponding to two different futures - at the same time.)

Arbitrary-length search pattern?

That is practically labeling /? matches, right? It is overkill for our purposes, IMO. Again, we are optimizing for the common case. A 2-character pattern, with the secondary group of matches displayed ahead of time, should be enough for making an on-screen jump efficiently 99% of the time; in that remaining 1%, just live with having to press Space multiple times. (What the heck are you editing, on what size of display, by the way?)

Labeled matches for 1-character search?

That would be pretty pointless, for two reasons. First, the pause is inevitable then, since it is physically impossible to show labels ahead of time. And usually there are too many matches, so we should use multi-character labels. (The closer ones you could probably reach with sab directly, instead of fa + l.) Now, ask yourself the question: isn't it much better to type two on-screen characters and then a "little bit surprising" label almost in one go (sabl), than to type one on-screen character, and wait for (most probably) two surprising characters to appear (fa + lm)?

Second, labeling matches makes it impossible to directly jump to the first target when doing operations - we're making our lives harder in the most frequent case (e.g. couldn't do a simple dfa).

In general, if you need to start thinking about whether to use f or s, scanning the context, then the whole thing is screwed already. Minimal mental effort. That is the mantra of Lightspeed. You should think of f and t as shortcuts for very specific situations, when you can count the number of occurrences, and thus reach for them in a totally automatic way, and not as equals of the s/x motions.

I miss Sneak's "vertical scope" feature...

That might indeed be useful, but I considered it would needlessly complicate the plugin. Sometime in the future we might add that though.

If you work with tabular data frequently, you can make a mapping instead that pre-populates the normal search prompt with horizontal bounds based on the count, something like the following (:h /\%v):

" note: g? in the example overwrites the superfun native rot13 command
nnoremap <expr> g/ '/<C-u>\%>'.(col(".")-v:count1).'v\%<'.(col(".")+v:count1).'v'
nnoremap <expr> g? '?<C-u>\%>'.(col(".")-v:count1).'v\%<'.(col(".")+v:count1).'v'

🌜 Contributing

Every contribution is very welcome, be it a bug report, fix, or just a discussion-initiating question - please do not feel intimidated. If you have any problems with the documentation especially, do not hesitate to reach out.

Tip: besides the issue tracker, be sure to also check/use Discussions for announcements, simple Q&A, and open-ended brainstorming.

Regarding feature requests and enhancements, consider the guiding principles first. If you have a different vision, feel free to fork the plugin and improve upon it in ways you think are best - I am glad to help -, but I'd like to keep this version streamlined, and save it from feature creep. Of course, that doesn't mean that I am not open for discussions.

Lightspeed is written in Fennel, and compiled to Lua ahead of time. I am aware that using Fennel might limit the number of available contributors, but compile-time macros, pattern matching, and a bunch of other features are simply too much of a convenience. (Learning a Lisp can be an eye-opening experience anyway, even though Fennel is something of a half-blood.)

As for "building", the plugin is really just one .fnl file at the moment, that you can compile into the lua folder with the Fennel executable manually, or using the provided Makefile.

💡 Inspired by

As always, we are standing on the shoulders of giants:

• Sneak: a big fan of this - absolute respect for justinmk, besides his work on Neovim, for making a motion plugin that I have considered to be close to perfect for a long time
• clever-f
• Hop: a promising take on EasyMotion in the Neovim-era
• EasyMotion: the venerable one, of course