vimtutor online — the tutorial that ships with vim, in your browser

This is the real thing: the complete text of vimtutor, the tutorial Vim and Neovim install on your machine, running here in a buffer with full vim emulation. You scroll it with j, you edit the practice lines in place, and the ✗ in the left column turns into a ✓ the moment a line matches what the lesson asked for — the same check the tutorial does on your own machine. Nothing to install, nothing saved, no account.

what you get

• chapter 1 — the classic seven lessons, 34 of them plus a summary each: hjkl, x and i, operators and motions (dw d$ dd), counts, undo, put and replace, the change operator, search, %, substitute, visual mode, open and append, copy & paste, options, help and completion. Roughly half an hour
• chapter 2 — text objects, named and numbered registers, the expression register, special registers and marks. Eight to ten minutes on top
• 48 lessons, 33 checked lines — every exercise the tutorial checks is checked here too, live, as you edit
• :lessons — the full index with your progress, and a jump into any lesson
• your setup — nine colorschemes, and the :vimrc panel loads your own mappings into the tutorial

what a browser can't do

The tutorial text is left exactly as upstream wrote it, including the lessons that talk to a machine this page doesn't have. Where that happens, a short note appears above the buffer instead. The honest list:

• :q! :wq — there is no editor to quit, and nothing here is written anywhere in the first place
• :w FILENAME · :r FILENAME · :!ls — no disk and no shell behind a web page (lessons 5.1 to 5.4)
• :help · <C-w><C-w> — no help window; every command is documented at neovim.io/doc
• :set ic · :set hls — this emulation has no options, but what they switch on is already the default: search ignores case unless you type a capital, and every match lights up. :nohlsearch clears it
• <C-g> and command-line completion aren't wired up; the mode line shows your line and column instead
• <C-r>=, the expression register, needs a vimscript interpreter — chapter 2 tells you what it would print, and the ✓ still works if you type the number in
• "+ goes through the browser clipboard and asks for permission the first time; the arrow keys are blocked on purpose — this is a vim trainer

Everything else runs for real: operators and motions with counts, all the text objects down to sentences, paragraphs and tags, named and numbered registers, marks, macros, the jumplist, visual and visual-block mode, :s with ranges and the g and c flags, :reg :sort :g, undo, redo and .

how to work through it

• read a lesson, then do it — the tutorial is built around typing, not skimming
• mangled a practice line? tab restores the lesson you're standing in, and u undoes like anywhere else
• :lessons lists all of them with your progress, and jumps you to any one
• two or three lessons a sitting beats one long push — the commands stick through repetition

questions

Is this the real vimtutor?

Yes — it is the tutorial text that ships with Vim and Neovim, reproduced in full: both chapters, 48 lessons, every practice line and every summary. Only the file's markup is flattened to the plain text the tutorial displays; not a word is rewritten.

Do I need to install vim?

No. The page runs a full vim emulation in the browser, so the commands the tutorial teaches actually do what it says. Nothing is installed, and nothing you type is ever saved anywhere.

How long does it take?

Chapter 1 is the classic sit-down of about half an hour. Chapter 2 adds another eight to ten minutes by its own estimate. It works just as well two lessons at a time.

I mangled a practice line — now what?

Press u to undo, like anywhere else in vim. If a lesson is beyond saving, tab restores the lesson you are standing in, and :lessons has a button that restores the whole chapter.

Does it remember where I was?

Lessons you finish are remembered in your own browser, and :lessons shows the count with a link back into any of them. The buffer itself starts clean on every visit — same as running vimtutor again.

Is this Vim's vimtutor or Neovim's :Tutor?

It is the Neovim runtime version, which is the classic seven lessons plus a second chapter on text objects, registers and marks. That is why the text says Neovim in a few places; everything it teaches is plain vim.

after the tutorial

vimtutor teaches you what the keys do. Speed comes from reaching for the right one without thinking, which is what the rest of vimtyper drills: the vim trainer for motions with live shortest-key hints, edit mode for operators and text objects on real code, and the vim speed test for a score to beat. Neovim user? Start at the nvim trainer.

Written by Michael C. Pierce and Robert K. Ware, Colorado School of Mines, using ideas supplied by Charles Smith, Colorado State University; modified for Vim by Bram Moolenaar and for Neovim by its maintainers. Reproduced from the Neovim runtime files.