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I work with two displays.

I usually open one instance of Vim in display #1 (let's call it Vim #1), which over time ends up having an open buffer for nearly every file in a project.

Now I want to open one of the files in display #2, with a separate instance of Vim (#2). I ideally want to see the file in the same state I've got it somewhere inside Vim #1: with the same unsaved changes.

I ultimately want to have two separate Vim instances simultaneously editing one buffer (possibly sharing the same .swp?).

Is there a way to do that in Vim?

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    Perhaps the CoVim plugin works for you.
    – Christian Brabandt
    Commented Oct 24, 2017 at 11:31
  • If you open a vertical split window with ctrl-w + v you'll have 2 instances. It doesnt allow for you to split over 2 physical screens if thats what you wanted, unless you make it really big so it flows over the two displays haha
    – ljden
    Commented Oct 24, 2017 at 14:13
  • never actially tried that, but wouldn't vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/remote.html solve your problem?
    – B.G.
    Commented Oct 24, 2017 at 14:15
  • possible cross-site duplicate question on SO: stackoverflow.com/q/15444823/4748017
    – Herb
    Commented Oct 24, 2017 at 16:04
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    @HerbWolfe That question is about sharing registers. This one is actually about buffers.
    – Pierre Prinetti
    Commented Oct 25, 2017 at 8:12

2 Answers 2

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If you are still looking for an answer and willing to try neovim, the neovim-remote does what you need. From the readme:

Open files always in the same nvim process no matter which terminal you're in.

If you just run nvr -s, a new nvim process will start and set its address to /tmp/nvimsocket automatically. Now, no matter in which terminal you are, nvr file will always work on that nvim process.

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    This is not really for opening the same file in two (Neo)Vim's, but instead to open a file in an existing instance of NeoVim. For example, if you use nvr as your $EDITOR, then when you git commit, instead of opening a new NeoVim to type the commit message, it will ask the already running NeoVim (which might be in a GUI window) to open that file to edit it. Once you save&close the file there, nvr will say it's done, so git commit will continue. That's something original Vim has supported as --remote but NeoVim didn't have it natively...
    – filbranden
    Commented May 23, 2020 at 17:37
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I have been looking for a solution to this problem for quite a while now and just found out (pretty much by accident) that there is a GUI wrapper for Neovim, which has support for independent windows for the same instance!

https://github.com/yatli/fvim

You can detach a window into an external OS window with Ctrl+w g e.

Unfortunately I have discovered that it doesn't really play well with some plugins, so I don't use it at the moment. It might be worth keeping an eye on the following list to see if any of the other GUI wrappers implement a similar feature: https://github.com/topics/neovim-guis

Edit: I have just found some more approaches towards a solution to the same problem:

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