How do I reorder open tabs?

Question

Let's say I have four open files: file0.txt, file1.txt, file2.txt, and file3.txt. I open all of them in that order as tabs. So my tab ordering is this:

• file0.txt
• file1.txt
• file2.txt
• file3.txt

Then let's say that I want to instead reorder my tabs so that file2.txt comes before file1.txt:

• file0.txt
• file2.txt
• file1.txt
• file3.txt

How do I do that? Is there a Vim command to move the current tab to the left or right, or otherwise reorder the currently opened tabs?

Answer 1

You can use the tabmove command. (:help tabmove will tell you all you need to know)

The command takes two kind of parameters:

A sign (+ or -) followed by a number:

• :tabmove +2 will move your tab of 2 places to the right
• :tabmove -2 will do the same to the left.

You can also use the command with a simple number to set the position of the tab:

• :tabmove 0 will put the tab as the first one
• :tabmove 2 will put the tab in the third position
• :tabmove will put the tab as the last one

Also I put those lines in my .vimrc

" move current tab to left/right
noremap <Leader><Left>  :execute 'silent! tabmove ' . (tabpagenr()-2)<CR>
noremap <Leader><Right> :execute 'silent! tabmove ' . tabpagenr()<CR>

They allow you to move the current tab of one place with the combination Leader+Right arrow and Leader+Left arrow maybe they could be useful to you.

Edit: As @TomMcDo pointed out in the comments the previous mappings could be simplified and still work properly:

noremap <Leader><Left>  :tabmove -1<CR>
noremap <Leader><Right> :tabmove +1<CR>