NVChad - Turn Neovim Into An Awesome IDE

[@m4rt_]

I used to like and be interested in pre-made configurations for things like Neovim and Emacs (e.g. Doom Emacs, and Lazy Vim). But after using them for a bit, I felt like it was more of a hassle than it's worth, so I went back to using my own simple configurations. It may not be like this for everyone, but it's like this for me. I like things to be simple, and not bloated with things I don't care about. Also, I often find that those pre-made configurations are made for someone else and not for me, so it's more like I'm forcing myself to do it someone elses way instead of making it work for my needs. Currently my Neovim config is some custom keybinds. Some various plugins through packer (e.g. treesitter, lsp-zero, harpoon, toggleterm, and lualine). And a gruvbox theme (I tend to change my theme every now and then, but this is the one I'm currently using.) (there are some other stuff in there but that's mostly configuring the plugins, and some vim settings)

[@eklipsed9254]

Based HARPOON user detected

[@GudJuJuTV]

That’s really all you need honestly! Almost identical config to yours and I’m loving it. Kickstart is also super close to this

[@gonkong5638]

This is the way. Never use pre made stuff guys! Be authenticate!

[@hectoraldairaguilarhernand231]

That's literally nvchad

[@inevespace]

Same. I use nvim mostly for latex writing. It is very difficult to understand pre-made configs. As noob I got only benefits of beautification but was completely lost how to use functionality features of preinstalled plugins. When I configured nvim from scratch, at lest somehow I started to use plugins functionality, because I knew why I added them.

[@toxiccan175]

As a sysadmin, I’ve worked hard to learn the shortcuts of my text editor and improve my efficiency. I doubt you can find another sysadmin as fast as I am with my preferred editor, GNU Nano.

[@Aoredon]

I present: myself.

[@mileseramosroman2387]

uff im sensing the most epic anime fight of 2024 is about to go down

[@GlorytoTheMany]

I was also a nanoer until my job involved pasting SSH public keys into ~/.ssh/authorized_keys. Sometimes the pasted key didn't work, so I went to check why. Turned out Nano inserted an arbitrary line break at one point because it found the line too long, so it thought it's helping me by cutting it up. If I was composing a novel, probably it would have been right, but it's not a welcome feature for sysadmins and software devs. I realized Vi(m) doesn't do that, it's always true to the text I'm editing, so I started to lean towards it more and by today Vim is my go-to text editor. However I should still learn a lot about it to be more efficient or to enable language server support which would be especially useful for Rust.

[@sebastiangazey7245]

Pretty sure if you go into your nano config you can turn off auto line breaks lol

[@charlescrawford9972]

Dont accuse a dev of not rtfm​@@sebastiangazey7245

[@Chad48309]

My name is Chad and I live in Nevada, so this title freaked me out at a glance.

[@madmartigan1634]

If you're on the internet at all in the past few years, you must get spooked quite a bit

[@Chad48309]

@madmartigan1634 being me in CURRENT_YEAR is a very odd experience actually

[@Felix-on9dr]

Chad from Nevada, you have to turn Neovim into an awesome IDE right now

[@fikrirahmatnurhidayat4988]

This is hilarious

[@martiananomaly]

Do not go to a certain African country

[@theaninova]

Gotta love the pixel misalignment on the statusbar thanks to Alacritty

[@saymehname]

Truly a rust product 🙈

[@zeocamo]

it is fix in kitty..

[@This_Guy-]

Nchad is mid packer or lazy the true plugin in my opinion

[@LabiaLicker]

Alacritty also completely breaks ANSI Escape Sequences.

[@sumitftr]

@@saymehname it is not the problem of rust!! The only reason you hate rust because you can't learn it. It is truly the best language now

[@Smickyo]

I took Luke Smith's config about 3 years ago and have been changing things in it slowly over time to suit my current workflow. I think this could be good for someone starting out, but it really doesn't have any killer features that would make me want to switch to it.

[@Smickyo]

Actually it was probably 5 years ago thinking about it :o

[@wh7988]

luke smiths configs are brainrot, admiting u use it is kind of embarrassing

[@davidr2421]

​@@wh7988 What is this weird tribal reaction to text editor configs?

[@imgladnotu9527]

​@@davidr2421just humans being tribalistic as per usual

[@wh7988]

@@davidr2421 says a lot about you if you can't see it

[@shampoable]

lots of people are validly suggesting avoiding large vim distros, a nice alternative to that would be nvim kickstart which gets just enough to get going while keeping everything vanilla nvim

[@cariyaputta]

This.

[@q2yogurt]

I wouldn't say this one is "large" though, it has just enough utility to get you started

[@supernovaw39]

Throw rotten tomatoes at me, but if I want to have a fancy editor on a remove server, I mount it using SSHFS to make it as though the files are on my local machine and then edit them in the normie GUI editors. I don't know if nvim has multiline editing where I can create an arbitrary number of selection regions using RegEx, but this feature has me absolutely hooked in Sublime Text/VS Codium. I can work on thousand-line files, find little mistakes, compare files, merge columns, find inconsistencies, I never even use spreadsheets.

[@unLinuxeroMas]

i am got insterested on this, what is the use cases ?

[@reyioa]

Multiline editing: Macros Regex: /s Large Files: bigfile.nvim Find Little mistakes: /s Comparing Files: tmux Merge Columns: vim-fugitive Finding Inconsistencies: /s Things I like more Telescope.nvim. A fzf that has grep and uses it as a file browser flash.nvim: Makes keyboard motions really fast Harpoon.nvim: Allows you quickly swap between useful files fast, great with C++ headers and source files Nvim-notify: a nice clean notification daemon There are also things i dont like such as the debugging support, and same with community and plugins. I would recommend a prebuilt config to start out but highly recommended to make your own editor yourself.

[@qanon4realvsqanon4gery70]

@@reyioa For comparing files I just use nvim -d file1 file2

[@reyioa]

@@qanon4realvsqanon4gery70 Since they have never used nvim before, C-b is easier for them instead of using commands, since they have background in vscode + sublime. And, Tmux is easier to use if the window manager supports it such as sway, etc. I use tmux because i use wayland + hyprland

[@NewWarrior21st]

Thanks for the video! I recently discovered NvChad and I was pleasantly surprised to see this vid! I'm under the process of leaving IntelliJ completely for Neovim instead.

[@Guilherme_hja]

I was not expecting Mental Outlaw and NvChad in the same video. A surprise, but a nice one. ^ ^

[@gabe_0x]

A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.

[@soooslaaal8204]

You haven't been watching for long enough then

[@episode6maine]

I think the main thing that makes neovim feel like an ide is the lsp capabilities and autocompletion which are handled by plugins like lspconfig and nvim-coc. I really wish there was a debug protocol baked into neovim the same way lsp currently is.

[@jiangxina9566]

dapui + dap adapter+ neotest for reponsive unit testing : works for pretty much every language.

[@handleneeds3charactersormore]

Is that WIF I'm seeing here?

[@yungabilify]

You uploaded this at a perfect time because I was going to try out lazyvim yesterday

[@isaac80745]

I heard about nvchad when I was learning rust. Great IDE. I was able to bring most features but it takes work to make it fully integrated

[@Skuiggly]

i love the flexibility that comes with customizability and extensions but dislike configuration! this is perfect

[@guelakais1438]

I have worked with Astrovim for a long time and found it ok. At the same time, I found it was always too overloaded for me, for example using two packet managers at the same time and including some extensions that I never used. NVChad looks more lightweight. I like that.

[@Levi_OP]

roll your own config! it may take a little bit longer to figure out, but it will make you much more familiar with neovim and make changing things much more simple. nvchad is pretty difficult to customize with custom plugins or changing the default behavior. p.s. if you're going to use a pre-made config, lazyvim is much better imo. much simpler to configure and doesn't lock you in to using specific settings that you might not like

[@kmatias2467]

I'd say the guide to overwriting nvchad's config values is quite good, as in what folder to use. There are also good examples in the config files. Everyone is free to have their own opinion though.

[@Redyf]

Honestly it's not that hard to customize it to your liking, all you need to do is read the docs. Lazyvim and nvchad have different goals. Nvchad is more of a statting point to make your own personal config, pretty much building it from "scratch" . While Lazyvim offers a complete development experience out of the box.

[@simpingsyndrome]

That's why i switch to lazyvim from nvchad, lazyvim is a lot easier to customize

[@repairstudio4940]

Love NVim! Excited already and 5 secs in!!! 🎉

[@kasroudra5170]

Using this for years. Fantastic, well maintained project

[@hand-eye4517]

Please make more videos like this your videos are always the most clear and concie without even trying you are a natural expert tutorial maker..... its not even close to being your main content yet you excel and exceed your peers . Ill be buying from your store for sure to show my appreciation for the great content (which i never do ) please make more instructional and informative content on useful tools. i managed to use multiple career changing technologies through your channel and for that i am thankful. plus i am always getting a dose of updates and entertainment when it comes to CS and security content.

[@Clanps]

I actually just switched from vim to nvim with NvChad last week. It's really nice and speeds up the work flow

[@ultimateParthenos]

2:21 i can agree to that as i too dont wanna pointlessly spend hours ricing my system or terminal just to make them look better and rather wanna spend that valuable amount of time working on a project or learning something

[@lodiped]

LazyVim is the perfect distro because it's still very much a vanilla install in a way. I feel like NVChad becomes another beast, so if you're not that savvy programming-wise, it might be difficult do deal with extensions. I feel like for a noob like myself, I get a lot more useful (and easier) information out there for solving LazyVim than I get for NVChad.

[@siduck_og]

nvchad uses lazy.nvim for package manager too, still vanilla. Lazyvim spoon feeds a lot, nvchad doesnt. Btw what issues did you had with nvchad?

[@zoox3732]

"basically surrendering to the NVChad bubble" Idkman I'm very interested in Vim but it's not like I wanted to do much configuration with VSCode either... If I enjoy NVChad as an IDE, I'll use it as such without worrying about whether or not I'm proficient in configuring Vim...

[@lodiped]

@@zoox3732 I think "surrender" was a strong word in my part, that wasn't really what I wanted it to mean. It's absolutely fine to just setup and use and it's expected that you do so. I'll edit and reword it. I used NVChad for several months btw. I like the approach of setting new stuff on LazyVim better than NVChad's. I feel like it's a little bit more understandable for me (like I said, i'm very much a noob, I started programming in January of 2023).

[@lodiped]

@@siduck_og I remember trying to install a few packages and I just couldn't get it to work. I don't really remember which ones though. I'm thinking it was harpoon but I don't really remember.

[@siduck_og]

@@lodiped did you lazy load them properly or add lazy=false?

[@ashwalker1]

I am hyped :) I actually use vim with termux on android and I think it will reduce my pain.

[@testchannel1938]

That's Great, I too followed a guide/blog and downloaded nvchad for termux and it feels better

[@dezly-macauley]

NvChad showed me what was possible with Neovim. The problem is I'm not a fan of the folder structure. So I wrote my own config from scratch that does everything NvChad can do and more 😎

[@danielpicassomunoz2752]

Open source it

[@discocat2500]

Cool. I just made the jump from nano to neovim and am slowly getting a feel for it. I like it a lot. I may have to print out a cheat sheet for my desk 😅.

[@Tony-mw-533]

It's always good to print out cheat sheets😂

[@JohnDoe-cx6zd]

NvChad is great, been using it for half a year now. It's a bit sad to sometimes return to my old incomplete rice of vim though lol Didn't know many of these hotkeys though! Small tip: you can exit screens created by split with plain :q, it won't close the whole vim until there's one screen left

[@anarchymatt]

Been using neovim at work (programmer) for two years now. Best switch I've made in my career

[@youtube.user.1234]

NvChad is great but I personally use another neovim config called AstroNvim - it feels a kinda easier to use out of the box and it suits my needs

[@brucemvanhorn2]

This is a really useful video for someone like me who wants to get better at NVChad. I had already done the install so I didn't need 20 minutes on that, which is what a lot of others do. I just needed to be shown around for the features I use in a normie IDE like file browsing and window splitting.

[@mr.togrul--9383]

I initially installed NvChad as well, but then after watching The Primeagen i felt ashamed and installed Neovim kickstart of TJ and configured that to be like NvChad (manually added file tree, buffers,..etc). Did this to call myself pure Neovim user lol.

[@veritas7010]

Honestly with neovim should always be careful of these so called bundles, in 2-3 years it will break if the maintainer decides to go on a chill tour or if there is drastic shift in conventions. So I'd say you should always build out a custom config, cuz otherwise if you don't know what's going on you'll end up switching back to something pretty in no time

[@tumescent]

It's a good place for a newbie to start tho. Gets them comfortable with what features they want, but everyone should make their own setup eventually

[@hotrod54chevy]

God this is beautiful. I recently switched to Arch after being afraid of how difficult it was supposed to be to install after finding the install script, now there's this. Thank you, sir. You're my hero 💜

[@Svene7]

Great timing! I just started to try Vim and Fireship led me to NVChad, which led me here.

[@eclypze_]

Started using VIM after 4 years of sublime text... instantly fell in love; but I will never forget sublime, he teached me to code

[@puweul]

This is exactly what I was looking for, thanks! Just an fyi to someone trying to use thus via ssh on windows, don't forget to set your PowerShell/CMD font.

[@tailsnintendo]

Switched to vim pretty quick as a sysad after feeling silly for pulling nano in front of my manager to write various scripts with hundreds of lines or configs that span more than a page. He wasn't bothered at all but I felt like I came straight out of super weenies hut jr. I've been driving nvchad since and compared to engineers who use their own vim config (trouble with LSP and making it work like an ide) or vscode (it eats 32gb of ram and makes their i7/r9 workstations sweat) it's super comfy and efficient. And looks better.

[@TheLvpatel]

Keep making videos like this; it is good to see how someone else is leaning neovim and understand the others pain.

[@silak33]

I find it a little funny that so many nvim plugins seems to do exactly the same as a feature which already is built in but just with a little better UI :D

[@HilaryCheng]

Really Thx a lots, start using neovim at the past, it is really tough and install every things and not easily , also, Nvchad makes the nvim much more like the modern editor

[@paullee107]

I'm gonna give this a try. I switched to vim a few months ago, but I'm still not REALLY good with vim shortcuts. Thanks.

[@razzat3616]

I'd recommended being familiar with vim motions at first. And try understanding how lua config works on nvim; for that see documentation in nvchad webpage itself.

[@minibubblegum5108]

As a daily nvchad user, this vid was helpful. Find buffer and split window is not something I use normally, plus didn't know the difference between tabs and buffers.

[@tompov227]

I prefer the Helix editor. It is VIM-like but the keybindings are a bit different and the actions you perform are reversed-like select then delete rather than d first then selection-but it comes with tree-sitter and LSP support and I find it much more plug and play than VIM and I prefer the select before action method of interacting with things. It also supports multiple cursors out of the box and has wide support so it is easy to use a package manager to install it

[@ducksies]

Helix doesn't have as wide of a support as Vi(m) when it comes to keybindings. I am an Emacs user but I still use Vi bindings, and I use Vi bindings in my browser as well. At work, I often have to ssh into remote machines and Vim or at least Vi are present on all of them. If your worry is just LSP and tree-sitter support, NvChad has them out of the box

[@lechi_2002]

I also prefer Helix. The keybindings make more sense once you get used to them.

[@Cyberbully34]

Today was the day that I officially switched from Vim to NeoVim, I gonna miss you, Vim 😢

[@rykerh1]

I've been using this since starting my journey into Arch Linux and absolutely loving it. It's like the perfect fusion of quick text editor and full ide with so much QoL

[@friedrich2797]

Thanks to you I am motivated to dive a little deeper into nvchad. I think I will use it from time to time at work. 👍

[@Splarkszter]

we all know he recommended it because it has chad in the name.

[@john_salt]

Can’t wait to use NVChad through the VSCode terminal

[@lunaticwyrm4675]

"Okay, let's be honest - for FIXING archlinux whenever I broke the GUI" Damn felt that 😅

[@kidgoku1984]

NVChad is awesome! It's my code editor of choice as a CS student

[@dabearodactyl]

i personally prefer lunarvim, but nvchad is cool too :D

[@Johnny-ju6di]

Holy book of rust enjoyer, very cool Jason Tatum. Personally I like lunarvim

[@carlosmengs]

He could not afford showing us that beautiful deepfake today 😢

[@siliconhawk]

i guess this is how god felt when he gave fire to man. casually gods giving mortals power that far exceed. truly a chad of all times

[@Damal.Chelay]

installed nvchad today using this vid. thanx kenny

[@coleshores]

Thanks for this, I use neovim for all of my development as a DevOps engineer. I cant wait to use this

[@owannn]

the creator of Nvchad is a gigachad 🔥

[@kxu5325]

I've been using vscode because I just couldn't be bothered to configure vim myself but now I'll install it for sure

[@paulzupan3732]

Glad to see you've been following the Rust book

[@Stangy-dev]

This video came up to me just as I was about to work on my code project, thanks so much. Also, what programming languages do you use?

[@pmmeurcatpics]

5:50 yoo a fellow minigrep developer! Was just doing that same chapter the other day

[@houndsol]

vim is truly incredible

[@CheapHomeTech]

I noticed you accept XMR. Awesome! Everybody in the world needs to use it! NvChad is poorly documented. The themes, th, suck. I've gone through all of them over-and-over-and-over but none work for me. The current line and the comments are almost invisible to my eyes. I've had to make some special colors. They need to quit coming out with so many themes and start making some good ones. Quality beats volume. The telegram help channel for NvChad is, well, unhelpful. Normal vi is good enough for me. Vim is overkill. Neovim in today's world is the default. NvChad is the kitchen sink. I told myself I'd try NvChad and if it slowed things down I'd choose something else. Surprisingly this kitchen sink is performant. No slowdowns to stop the show. Overall it was a great video.

[@Retic_01]

Best way I found to close those VSP and SP is (SPACE + X). Im still a little confused as to closing terminals.. But that also works with SPACE + X. You just need to not be in the Terminal I mode

[@Retic_01]

Oh and for the terminal Alt + H or V works for switching between console and file buffer

[@Hellbending]

Irony is coming here and knowing it's a vim related video and you just want to watch it (Perhaps to finally convert a friend) Peak reality though? That's coming here to watch for vim, and by the second or third time seeing the Rust code in front of me, realizing it's something I was attempting to implement while learning Rust. That, that's a subscription.

[@zinedine911]

better than working in a helpdesk troubleshooting printers

[@oludelehalleluyah6723]

I deleted vscode, pycharm and rustrover to use neovim. I was using Kickstart Neovim before but now I just installed NVChad and it is looking good

[@kmatias2467]

every time i watch a video about this config i learn something new lol

[@devarshihazarika4871]

i like the traditional vim / vi editor. nvim is just vscode without mouse

[@ZombieLincoln666]

somewhat true but my god is lua so much better than vimscript

[@landmimes]

oh it's like spacemacs but without the bloat!

[@NoobaLV]

what bloat

[@zZGzHD]

what boat? the .el files? nvchad would be similar with all the lua scripts.

[@landmimes]

@@zZGzHDyou're right, I should just use vi

[@zaxpeedy2852]

Thank you so much! I'm too lazy to learn these shortcuts myself XD

[@The_Original_Default_Username]

Nano gets shit on, but it's perfectly suitable for simple tasks like small updates to config files

[@wernersmidt3298]

The fact that youtube has some "Vim-like" bindings is telling

[@nevokrien95]

This seems l8ke it's a meme but it also isn't which makes it more of a meme. Good job

[@dakata2416]

Based af

[@poms3559]

EMacs for the win

[@lonelyshpee7873]

This is like seeing an old WW2 veteran saying "the allies will win"

[@kenneth_mata]

@@lonelyshpee7873 and they did 😊

[@devin-little]

let's go! I've been daily driving this version a year

[@Retic_01]

Great Video Thanks. Made me re try vim :P I just have to get all the config up and running again...

[@gothsboss]

Hi Mental, How is your RockPro doing so far and does the tor relay's work on them? Greetings and keep up the nice videos!

[@not_herobrine3752]

default emacs with the whiteboard theme seems to be all i need

[@zhaadd]

this whole time I did not know you could do that with NvimTree

[@0oNoiseo0]

Looks great! thank you for the share

[@satohnolan5270]

Thank you so much. That's all I really really need.

[@azgan123]

Guy who is not a developer selling IDE to me, nice.

[@Trizzi2931]

Disclaimer!!! Only use something like nvchad and other neovim distro if you have experience in configuring neovim with lua. These distro do come with setup but if you want to extend it to use other languages then you will have to configure no matter what.

[@zeocamo]

ctrl o or ctrl i is nav forward or backward in jumps, this is really useful when you edit more then 1 file, ex. you forgot what a function is doing, so you use gd to goto def. and you can read the code and to get back you ctrl o and you back to your code.

[@l0gic23]

Same, remote with Tmux and Vim... Back in the day... Felt 1337

[@johanngambolputty5351]

I tried nvchad, and then astro, and settled on astro. I haven't needed to customise it very much, just added some community language meta-packages really. Which-key is the best.

[@dritterregenschirm2324]

I really like helix, it has similar keybindings and treesitter lsp etc is already included

[@LBlendYT]

Small correction you actually CAN edit files through SSH with VSCode. There's an extension for it.

[@greatestone4eva]

nobody cares vscode is bullshit

[@dabearodactyl]

​@@greatestone4evareal

[@mpkoks]

I picked up you saying GUI first as gooey :D

[@krozareq]

I wouldn't call that an IDE, or at least the modern definition of one. It's a fancy text editor with a lot of extensions, much like VS Code. But does not really meet the definition of "Integrated" one expects these days for VCS (Git, TFS, etc), cloud, SQL, web development, seamless cross-platform, CoPilot in-code, Android mobile emulation, build environments, code testing and evaluation, time-travel debugging, load testing, GUI frameworks (i.e. WPF XAML), code signing, and CI/deployment integration. Nothing wrong with creating your own dev environment around a text editor for a specific project's needs. I do it all the time for open-source projects. but if it requires more than a few clicks to integrate into these tools in a rapid workflow then it's not Visual Studio or Rider. VS Code can do these things (and more) but is decidedly not considered an IDE. The title is a bit clickbaity since you're still handling a code project through text, which is fine for small projects. And hey, don't blame Arch for an X11 error! You just need to understand how X works. The problem is nobody knows how X works anymore :D. Although we can copypasta known working approaches for X extensions that've hobbled it together to work since the mid 90s. Thank the goddesses for Wayland.

[@driden1987]

+1 to printing cheatsheets. I also had one for tmux

[@Ginfidel]

Yay, more needlessly complicated text editors with hilariously obscure keyboard shortcuts, catering to a minuscule audience of over-specialized super users! But no, seriously, if we're going down this route, I prefer UltraEdit. Yeah yeah it's "absolutely proprietary" or whatever but it's not like I paid a cent for it lmao that's what the tricorn hat is for At least I can press Ctrl+H to switch to Chad hex editing instead of just Virgil text editing

[@NazmusLabs]

Vim extension for VSCode and VS2022 means you can use your existing text edior/IDE with the vim key bindings and features, Alhamdulillah. May Allah (S.W.T.) guide you and bestow upon you His Blessings; Ameen.

[@kirylbehansky1315]

Ok now i convinced, give it a try

[@eitantal726]

convergent evolution. everything looks like vscode

[@epireve]

Lets go!!

[@derpysean1072]

Same as Primeagen, I avoid multi windows / screens and the damn folder tree. I just want a simple lsp, a decent fuzzy finder and I am good.

[@khuntasaurus88]

Jetbrains: look at what theycmust do to mimic a fraction of our power

[@chillie_dude]

I'd recommend anyone that use an ide to get familiar with vim motions with an extension to their IDE Then use a distribution. Then write your own config from scratch. You never really understand a config and really how to improve it to improve your workflow until it's yours. Yes it takes hundreds of hours but over a 40 years career saving half an hour everyday you'd save 5000 hours so it's still worth. By the way i see many things are attempts to use Neovim with the same design as with classical IDEs. It's a bad idea. For example using a buffer to have a tree view of your project. You're so much more productive with things like Oil because you can use a regular buffer to delete/add files and modify filename through a regular buffer. Instead of shortcuts like the tree you show you can modify the buffer like any other (delete a file DD write in the buffer like in any file to create a new file etc.)

[@TreeLuvBurdpu]

VS Code flips through themes in your own view just like that. Already done.

[@vectorcr_0]

Would you consider making a video going into more details about getting LSP's installed