NVIM on Windows

This is something that I’ve been struggling with for a very long time. I am a fairly advanced user of NVIM on Ubuntu; however, I’ve never quite gotten a good workflow working with Windows.

After starting with a fresh Windows install, I figured it would be as good a time as any to really crack this problem open. To do that, I only have NVIM as my text editor and will be updating it as required.

NVIM Init File

This is the key to updating settings in VIM - the init file. This file is located at: ~\AppData\Local\nvim\init.vim

It is possible to update your settings to use ~/_vimrc by adding this to the above init file:

set runtimepath+=~/vimfiles,~/vimfiles/after
set packpath+=~/vimfiles
source ~/_vimrc

Found from here.

Plug Installation

I had to download a file to ~\AppData\Local\nvim\autoload\ for it to work! Plug is used to install plugins in NVIM. For the Windows install, I removed all the plugins and slowly added them back in as I confirmed they worked.

Microsoft Copilot Installation

Located here - just need to install NodeJS and then run the PowerShell command shown in the README. After that, running :Copilot setup worked.

Other Things

Navigating the file system is a little awkward as I have to use the NVIM built-in commands for the most part. I am used to having the terminal open and using the terminal commands to navigate the file system. This isn’t a showstopper, but it will require some new techniques. It might mean going to PowerShell and learning a few commands or just suffering through the GUI file explorer.