Swap the position of two windows

Question

Say the following is the current structure of my window:

+-----+----------------------------
|     |
|  A  |
|     |
+-----+
|     |
|  B  |

The order of A and B is not quite natural. It would be better if B was on top.

However, if I go <C-w>K, B will be the very top of all windows, which is not what I want. How can I put B above A, but not above any other window that is already above A?

And if two windows are vertically split, how can I change them to horizontally split?

Answer 1

To swap the two parts of a split window simply do: <C-w> <C-r>

Answer 2

CTRL-W x           exchange current window with window N
                   (default: next window)

(index.txt section 2.2, "Window commands")

If A is the current window, then the next will be B, so you only need <C-w> x

If B is the current window (and there are more windows below) then you'll first have to go to A, then exchange: <C-w> k <C-w> x

Answer 3

Another alternative to swapping windows or swapping the buffers, is to mark positions (using uppercase marks) in your files and open up those marks in the windows of your choosing.

For example if I have two files, file_A and file_B:

• I would go the window with file_A and mark it: mA
• go to the window with file_B and mark it: mB
• Then fetch the mark of file_A into that window: 'A
• then go back to the first window and fetch the mark of file_B in there: 'B.

The advantage of this method is if for some reason you split your pane more than once and there is no clear logic to swapping them around, like if you want to swap the panes at 12 o'clock and 7 o'clock, you can't just rotate the windows around but you can easily swap the buffers.

Answer 4

In order to swap window positions, the effect is equivalent to swapping buffers that those two windows show.
e.g. If window A has buffer 2 and window B has buffer 8, you'll want to go to Window A, select buffer 8, then to Window B, select buffer 2.

This idea inspired me to script it - and it's already in my own toolbox as well

Function Code:

function! WinBufSwap()
  let thiswin = winnr()
  let thisbuf = bufnr("%")
  let lastwin = winnr("#")
  let lastbuf = winbufnr(lastwin)

  exec  lastwin . " wincmd w" ."|".
      \ "buffer ". thisbuf ."|".
      \ thiswin ." wincmd w" ."|".
      \ "buffer ". lastbuf
endfunction

command! Wswap :call WinBufSwap()
map <Leader>bs <C-c>:call WinBufSwap()<CR>

1. Select window A
2. Select window B
3. :call WinBufSwap()
   This swaps the buffers in the two pre-selected windows, leaving the cursor in the original window.

Selecting the two desired windows to be swapped ahead of time is the key detail, as that is needed to specify for Vim which ones to work with.

Answer 5

You can swap the buffers between two windows with the following function:

function! SwitchWindow(count) abort
    let l:current_buf = winbufnr(0)
    exe "buffer" . winbufnr(a:count)
    exe a:count . "wincmd w"
    exe "buffer" . l:current_buf
    wincmd p
endfunction
nnoremap <C-w>x :<C-u>call SwitchWindow(v:count1)<CR>

Now, most often, swapping the buffers will technically act like swapping windows. Because you don't manually keep track of windows, you keep track of which window is holding which buffer. So, the function above will get you by for most situations.

Answer 6

You can use vim-windowswap, gives you the ability to swap two panes in vim using <leader>ww to select and then pressing it again to swap it with the pan you wanna replace it with

Answer 7

I know this is an old post, but I have missed this feature for a long time, so my first working version of bufMov.nvim can be found here https://github.com/c60cb859/bufMov.nvim It is for NeoVim

It uses the same mechanics as when moving around between windows. So if the a move to the right is made, it will find the windows to the right from the cursor position, and then swap the two buffers, and leave the cursor in the new window.