How to make searches not appear at the bottom of the window

Question

When I press n or N to find the next match, it often happens that the window is redrawn such that the next match is displayed on the bottom-most or top-most line on the screen, and I have to scroll a few lines further to see enough context to know if I actually want to edit that line.

Is there a way to force the matches to be displayed such that a few surrounding lines are always visible?

Answer 1

Check if set scrolloff=5 is what you need.

    Minimal number of screen lines to keep above and below the cursor.
    This will make some context visible around where you are working.  If
    you set it to a very large value (999) the cursor line will always be
    in the middle of the window (except at the start or end of the file or
    when long lines wrap).

Answer 2

Using scrolloff is the right answer.

Although when searching I usually prefer doing zz (scroll the current line to the middle)

And when doing confirmed substitution I usually prefer doing Ctrl e (scrolling one line)

Answer 3

The following mappings were adapted from Drew Neil's Practical Vim:

:nnoremap <Leader>n nzz
:nnoremap <Leader>N Nzz

They will make n go to the next match as usual and <Leader>n will go to the next match, centering the screen. You could also drop <Leader> from the mapping to change the defaults and have (next) searches also centered.