vimtyper — practice vim motions, edits and typing speed against the clock

vimtyper is a free typing game for vim users. You practice vim motions, real edits and raw typing speed against the clock, in a code buffer with full vim emulation. Think of it as touch-typing practice for editing instead of prose — it builds the muscle memory that makes a modal editor fast. Never touched vim? The complete vimtutor runs here too, so you can start at hjkl and work up.

four ways to play

• motions — a target lights up somewhere in the buffer. Land the cursor on it in as few keystrokes as you can, then the next one appears
• edit — the game calls out real edits: delete or change a word, join or duplicate lines, indent, change case, clear inside quotes, search & replace across the file. Solve each one any way you like — with operators, text objects, visual mode, registers or ex commands. A settings panel picks which edit types come up
• type — raw speed typing over code snippets, with live WPM and accuracy. Indentation is skipped for you
• tutor — the complete vimtutor, the tutorial that ships with vim, in one scrolling buffer. Every lesson from hjkl to registers and marks, with the ✗ beside a practice line turning into a ✓ as soon as you get it right

how it works

• every vim motion works: hjkl, word jumps (w b e), finds (f t), line and paragraph jumps (0 ^ $ { } gg G), counts, and more
• a live hint shows the shortest possible key sequence to the current target. It teaches you the motion you didn't know you were missing
• bring your own mappings: paste vimscript or lua keymaps into the built-in vimrc panel
• rounds of 15, 30, or 60 seconds score targets hit, keystrokes used, and your best keys-per-target — or practice edits untimed, the default in edit mode

why practice against the clock?

Most vim speed doesn't come from arcane commands. It comes from reaching any character on screen without thinking. Deliberate practice against a timer builds that reflex much faster than day-to-day editing — the same reason typing trainers beat “just typing more”. A few focused rounds a day compound quickly, for both navigation and typing speed.

keep going

Never used vim before? Start with the vimtutor — the official tutorial, playable here, no install. Still learning the motions? The vim trainer and nvim trainer lay out a practice path from hjkl to text objects. Want a score to beat? Take the vim speed test or the nvim speed test — the same game, framed as a benchmark with reference scores. For the full motion reference, the Neovim motion docs list everything the hint engine knows. And once single edits feel easy, VimGolf challenges you to finish whole refactors in minimal keystrokes.

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