How to jump between matching HTML/XML tags?

Question

How to jump between matching tags (such as <div>, <span>, etc.) when editing HTML/XHTML/XML documents similarly as % is used to jump between matching parentheses?

Answer 1

Vim ships with a macro called matchit that does this for you; all you need to do is activate it with runtime macros/matchit.vim in your vimrc. This will enable you to jump from, eg, a <div> to its </div>. Note that your cursor will have to be inside the angle brackets; if you're on the angle brackets, % will jump from one bracket to the other as normal.

Answer 2

You can jump between tags using visual operators, for example:

1. Place the cursor on the tag.
2. Enter visual mode by pressing v.
3. Select the outer tag block by pressing a+t or i+t for inner tag block.

Your cursor should jump forward to the matching closing html/xml tag. To jump backwards from closing tag, press o or O to jump to opposite tag.

Now you can either exit visual by pressing Esc, change it by c or copy by y.

---

To record that action into register, press qq to start recording, perform tag jump as above (including Esc), press q to finish. Then to invoke jump, press @q.

---

See more help at :help visual-operators or :help v_it:

at a <tag> </tag> block (with tags)

it inner <tag> </tag> block

---

Alternatively use plugin such as matchit.vim or surround.vim.

---

See also:

• Using % in languages without curly braces
• Jump to matching XML tags in Vim at stackoverflow SE
• How can I find the close html tag quickly in vim? at stackoverflow SE
• Navigating HTML tags in Vim at stackoverflow SE
• How to navigate between begin and end html tag? at superuser SE
• VIM jump from one xml tag to the closing one at Unix SE
• How can I select an html tag's content in Vim? at superuser SE

Answer 3

The xmledit (http://vimawesome.com/plugin/xmledit) plugin allows to jump between open and close tags using

• <localleader>%

Often <localleader> will be \, so you can jump with

• \%

NOTE: Unlike matchit, you don't have to put your cursor inside the tag. Placing it right on the < or > is perfectly fine for the xmledit plugin. :)

NOTE 2: A drawback here is, that you can't use it in the visual mode. But this isn't a big deal, since you can always select the entire tag with at.

Answer 4

A relatively new and popular plugin vim-matchup provides quite extensive support as long as there is syntax highlighting for the language, HTML included.