Visual Mode

Visual mode allows you to select and highlight blocks of text, and then do operations like delete etc. on whatever is selected.

Enter visual mode

Making selections in visual mode

Making changes to highlighted selection in visual mode

All the standard delete, yank, cut, increment numbers, change case etc. can be applied to the highlighted section. For example you can delete all the highlighted selection by pressing d, or increment all numbers in a column that have been highlighted in block mode by pressing Ctrl+A. Refer to the normal mode section of this guide for a list of options you can use.

Exiting visual mode

Some examples of using all 3 visual modes

First create a file, or copy and paste in, this example text in to Vim:

Step 1: Character-wise Visual Mode

1. Move your cursor to the start of the word banana.
2. Press v to enter character-wise visual mode.
3. Move with l (right arrow) until the whole word banana is selected.
4. Press y to yank (copy) it.
5. Move to the bottom line (grape) and press p to paste it.

You should see:

Step 2: Line-wise Visual Mode

1. Press V while on the word cherry.
2. Press j twice to select down to elderberry.
3. Press d to delete those lines.

You should see:

Step 3: Block-wise (Column) Visual Mode

Let’s prepend an * to each fruit:

1. Press gg to go to the top of the file.
2. Press Ctrl-v to enter block-wise mode.
3. Press j three times to select the first column of the first 4 lines.
4. Press Shift+I then type *, then press Esc.

You should see a * at the start of every line:

Step 4: Uppercase all fruits

1. Press gg to go to the top.
2. Press Shift+V then Shift+G to visually select from top to bottom.
3. Press g Shift+U to make all text uppercase.

You should see: