This (neo)vim plugin makes scrolling nice and smooth. Find yourself
completely lost every time you press Ctrl-D or Ctrl-F? You might want to
give vim-smoothie a try!
You will need reasonably new Vim or Neovim with timers support. Vim 8+ or Neovim 0.3+ should do the trick.
Install the plugin using your favorite plugin manager, for example vim-plug:
Plug 'psliwka/vim-smoothie'
vim-smoothie aims for sane defaults, and should work out-of-the-box for most
users. In some cases, however, you might want to customize its behavior, by
adjusting one or more of the following variables in your vimrc:
-
g:smoothie_no_default_mappings: If true, will prevent the plugin from overriding default scrolling keys (Ctrl-Dand friends). You are then supposed to bind keys you like by yourself. Seeplugin/smoothie.vimto discover available mappings. -
g:smoothie_disabled: Disable vim-smoothie. Useful for extremely slow connections. -
g:smoothie_base_speed: Controls the speed. Set to10by default. To go slower, reduce the value. To go faster, increase the value. -
g:smoothie_update_interval: Time interval (in milliseconds) between successive screen updates. Use a smaller value to get smoother animations, or use a bigger value if you are on a slow connection. -
g:smoothie_break_on_reverse: If true, then scrolling will stop immediately when a command is given to scroll opposite to the current direction. -
g:smoothie_bell_enabled: If true, then a bell will be rang if the scroll commmand being issued is invalid (i.e. we have reached boundary)
There are many other Vim plugins attempting to resolve the same problem. The most intresting one is sexy_scroller.vim, which covers way more movement commands than vim-smoothie will ever do. Unfortunately, it also suffers from frequent visual artifacts, such as erratic screen jumps and animation jittering, impairing visual orientation and breaking the user experience. Many of these bugs are nearly impossible to fix due to the plugin's internal design. Hence, vim-smoothie was born, focusing on stable, bug-free, smooth experience, at a cost of smaller feature set.
The table below summarizes key differences between vim-smoothie and three other popular smooth scrolling plugins I've used in the past: sexy_scroller.vim, comfortable-motion.vim, and vim-smooth-scroll.
| vim-smoothie | sexy_scroller.vim | comfortable-motion.vim | vim-smooth-scroll | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Supported commands | ^D ^U ^F ^B |
A lot❤️ | ^D ^U ^F ^B |
^D ^U ^F ^B |
| Erratic screen jumps and jittering now and then | Nope | A lot💔 | Nope | Nope |
| Scrolling distance is proportional to window height | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Easing out (soft-stop) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ |
Supports setting [count] before movement (f.ex. 3^F to scroll down 3 pages) |
✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
Respects scroll and startofline options |
✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
^D and ^U behave correctly near buffer ends, just moving the cursor instead of scrolling the window |
✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Pun in name | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
vim-smoothie strives to remain fully compatible with native commands it
replaces. That is, every command should still behave exactly as described in
:help scroll.txt. There are still some deviations from the origial behavior,
which hopefully will be addressed in the future:
^D,^U,^F,^Bshould beep when they can't move any further.^Fand^Bshould respect thewindowoption.- Native commands may move in a smarter way over wrapped/folded lines.
Created by Piotr Śliwka.
Many thanks to authors of vim-smooth-scroll, comfortable-motion.vim, and sexy_scroller.vim for inspiration!