[vim] How to move screen without moving cursor in Vim?

I recently discovered Ctrl+E and Ctrl+Y shortcuts for Vim that respectively move the screen up and down with a one line step, without moving the cursor.

Do you know any command that leaves the cursor where it is but moves the screen so that the line which has the cursor becomes the first line? (having a command for the last line would be a nice bonus).

I can achieve this by manually pressing Ctrl+E (or Ctrl+Y) the proper number of times, but having a command that somehow does this directly would be nice.

Any ideas?

I wrote a plugin which enables me to navigate the file without moving the cursor position. It's based on folding the lines between your position and your target position and then jumping over the fold, or abort it and don't move at all.

It's also easy to fast-switch between the cursor on the first line, the last line and cursor in the middle by just clicking j, k or l when you are in the mode of the plugin.

I guess it would be a good fit here.

I've used these shortcuts in the past (note: separate key strokes i.e. tap z, let go, tap the subsequent key):

z enter --> moves current line to top of screen

z . --> moves current line to center of screen

z - --> moves current line to bottom

If it's not obvious:

enter means the Return or Enter key.

. means the DOT or "full stop" key (.).

- means the HYPHEN key (-)

For what it's worth, z. avoids the danger of saving and closing Vi by accidentally typing ZZ if the caps-lock is on.

Vim requires the cursor to be in the current screen at all times, however, you could bookmark the current position scroll around and then return to where you were.

mg  # This book marks the current position as g (this can be any letter)
<scroll around>
`g  # return to g

You can prefix your cursor move commands with a number and that will repeat that command that many times

10Ctrl+E will do Ctrl+E 10 times instead of one.

zEnter does exactly what this question asks for.

It works where strangely zz would not work (vim 7.4.1689 on Ubuntu 2016.04 LTS with no special .vimrc)

You may find answers to "Scrolling Vim relative to cursor, custom mapping" useful.

You can use ScrollToPercent(0) from that question to do this.

Additionally:

• Ctrl-y Moves screen up one line
• Ctrl-e Moves screen down one line
• Ctrl-u Moves cursor & screen up ½ page
• Ctrl-d Moves cursor & screen down ½ page
• Ctrl-b Moves screen up one page, cursor to last line
• Ctrl-f Moves screen down one page, cursor to first line

Ctrl-y and Ctrl-e only change the cursor position if it would be moved off screen.

Courtesy of http://www.lagmonster.org/docs/vi2.html

Here's my solution in vimrc:

"keep cursor in the middle all the time :)
nnoremap k kzz
nnoremap j jzz
nnoremap p pzz
nnoremap P Pzz
nnoremap G Gzz
nnoremap x xzz
inoremap <ESC> <ESC>zz
nnoremap <ENTER> <ENTER>zz
inoremap <ENTER> <ENTER><ESC>zzi
nnoremap o o<ESC>zza
nnoremap O O<ESC>zza
nnoremap a a<ESC>zza

So that the cursor will stay in the middle of the screen, and the screen will move up or down.

my mnemonic for scrolling...

Adding to other answers also pay attention to ze and zs, meaning: move screen to the left/right of the cursor (without moving the cursor)

+-------------------------------+
^                               |
|c-e (keep cursor)              |
|H(igh)             zt (top)    |
|                   ^           |
|           ze      |      zs   |
|M(iddle)  zh/zH <--zz--> zl/zL |
|                   |           |
|                   v           |
|L(ow)              zb (bottom) |
|c-y (keep cursor)              |
v                               |
+-------------------------------+

also look at the position of h and l and t and b and (with qwertz keyboard) c-e and c-y (also the "y" somehow points to the bottom) on the keyboard to remember where the screen is moving.

Enter vim and type:

:help z

z is the vim command for redraw, so it will redraw the file relative to where you position the cursor. The options you have are as follows:

z+ - Redraws the file with the cursor at top of the window and at first non-blank character of your line.

z- - Redraws the file with the cursor at bottom of the window and at first non-blank character of your line.

z. - Redraws the file with the cursor at centre of the window and at first non-blank character of your line.

zt - Redraws file with the cursor at top of the window.

zb - Redraws file with the cursor at bottom of the window.

zz - Redraws file with the cursor at centre of the window.

To leave the cursor in the same column when you use Ctrl+D, Ctrl+F, Ctrl+B, Ctrl+U, G, H, M, L, gg

you should define the following option:

:set nostartofline

I'm surprised no one is using the Scrolloff option which keeps the cursor in the middle of the page. Try it with:

:set so=999

It's the first recommended method on the Vim wiki and works well.

Sometimes it is useful to scroll the text with the K and J keys, so I have this "scroll mode" function in my .vimrc (also bound to zs).

See scroll_mode.vim.