I’ve been using the IDEA Vim plugin in Android Studio for a while. I only ever learned the basics with Practical Vim, but that’s been enough.

The nice part is how the same muscle memory works everywhere: I can edit the same way in Android Studio, VS Code, iTerm, or Obsidian. Most editor-specific shortcuts I used to know are gone, and I don’t miss them.

IDEA Vim config

Here’s my .ideavimrc:

" Global .ideavimrc Settings
source ~/.vimrc 

" General Settings
set nooldundo

" Idea Vim Plugins
Plug 'machakann/vim-highlightedyank'
Plug 'tpope/vim-commentary'

" IdeaVim Plugins: Enabling
set surround
set highlightedyank

" Key Mappings
map Q gq

Global Vim config

And here’s the global .vimrc (sourced in the first line above):

let mapleader = ','

" General Settings
set scrolloff=10
set number
set relativenumber
set showmode
set showcmd
set showmatch
set visualbell

" Search Improvements
set ignorecase
set smartcase
set incsearch
set hlsearch

" Other Configurations
set nocompatible
set cursorline
set cursorcolumn

filetype on
filetype plugin on
filetype indent on

syntax on

set wildmenu
set wildmode=list:longest
set wildignore=*.docx,*.jpg,*.png,*.gif,*.pdf,*.pyc,*.exe,*.flv,*.img,*.xlsx

nnoremap <esc> :noh<return><esc>

That’s it. Nothing fancy, but enough to keep me productive across tools.

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