How do I change the current split's width and height?

Question

I am working on split (using ^w+v, ^w+s) buffers, but sometimes I would like to widen a current split or change its height. How can I achieve that?

Answer 1

There are several window commands that allow you to do this:

• Ctrl+W +/-: increase/decrease height (ex. 20<C-w>+)
• Ctrl+W >/<: increase/decrease width (ex. 30<C-w><)
• Ctrl+W _: set height (ex. 50<C-w>_)
• Ctrl+W |: set width (ex. 50<C-w>|)
• Ctrl+W =: equalize width and height of all windows

See also: :help CTRL-W

Answer 2

You can also use the resize commands:

• :resize [+-]N - resize a horizontal split, increasing or decreasing height by N characters.
• :vertical resize [+-]N - resize a vertical split, increasing or decreasing height by N characters.
• :resize N - resize a horizontal split, setting height to N characters.
• :vertical resize N - resize a vertical split, setting width to N characters.

These are equivalent to the Ctrlw commands. See :help window-resize.

Answer 3

This is one of the few reasons I like to use vim's mouse mode.

If you use the GUI version, or your terminal supports sending drag events (such as xterm or rxvt-unicode) you can click on the split line and drag to resize the window exactly where you want, without a lot of guess work using the ctrl-w plus,minus,less,greater combinations.

In terminal versions, you have to set mouse mode properly for this to work

:set mouse=n

(I use 'n', but 'a' also works)

and you have to set the tty mouse type

:set ttymouse=xterm2

A lot of people say that a lot of time is wasted using the mouse (mostly due to the time it takes to move your hand from the keyboard to the mouse and back), but I find that, in this case, the time saved by having immediate feedback while adjusting the window sizes and the quickness of re-resizing (keep moving the mouse instead of typing another key sequence) outweighs the delay of moving my hand.

Answer 4

Resize splits more quickly

You can use the :resize command or its shortcut :res to change the height of the window. To change the height to 60 rows, use:

:resize 60

You can also change the height in increments. To change the height by increments of 5, use:

:res +5
:res -5

You can use :vertical resize to change the width of the current window. To change the width to 80 columns, use:

:vertical resize 80

You can also change the width in increments. To change the width by increments of 5, use:

:vertical resize +5
:vertical resize -5

Answer 5

Seems no one mentioned z{nr}<CR>.

If you :h ^w_, then will see z{nr}<CR> just below it, which have same effect as CTRL-W_.

If you do not need z= for spell check, and added below to .vimrc,

" vertical resize, z0<CR> minimize, z= equalize, z99<CR> maximize.
nnoremap z= <C-w>=

Then for change window height:

• z0<CR> to minimize height of current window
• z99<CR> to maxmize height of current window
• z= to make them all equal

Answer 6

For some reason (likely a plugin) the standard C-w > (etc.) did not work in my ~/.vimrc.

These .vimrc additions worked (Ctrl-Shift-Left ... where Left | Right = left and right arrow keys, respectively.

" noremap <silent> <C-S-Left> :vertical resize +5<CR>
" noremap <silent> <C-S-Right> :vertical resize -5<CR>
noremap <silent> <C-S-Left> :vertical resize +1<CR>
noremap <silent> <C-S-Right> :vertical resize -1<CR>