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At the beginning of September 2022 I made the jump from VS Code to Neovim. I was having issues in VS Code with workflow and it was getting uncomfortable to use with the way keyboard shortcuts are handled. Moving turned out to be a great decision, and I even wrote about it here. I've been able to increase productivity and build an editor / IDE experience that is personal to me.
I do nearly all of my work on a Windows machine, and for the software work that I do I use the Windows Subsystem for Linux, version 2. This works great for me, but I occasionally want to edit some files on the Windows side of things and I really wanted to have my Neovim setup working in Windows natively. I also have a couple of projects that target Windows that need maintenance from time to time.
I decided to write this article because there appears to be a knowledge gap in the Neovim community regarding how to set things up and get them working smoothly on Windows. In the process of trying things and getting them working, I found a "happy path" that I think other Windows users will find helpful. I discovered that there are a few things people need to do and a few other things they need to install to get something that:
Neovim is a TUI program, meaning it runs its UI in the terminal and uses character placements to make things look right. This differs from other Windows applications that are nearly all GUI apps, meaning they have their own user interface as part of the application. What this means for you is that you will need a few things set up first to get Neovim working the way you expect. Once these things are addressed, Neovim can be smooth and productive in a Windows environment, just like Linux and Mac.
The first thing you need is ... well ... a computer with Windows on it. This guide will cover steps for installing in Windows 11, as well as Windows 10 with updates applied. If you don't receive and install system updates automatically, you might hit a sticking point here and there but overall this should still work.
Lastly, I assume a minimum knowledge of how to do some basic command line things like change directories, make a directory, and run a command. If this is foreign to you, spend some time understanding that first. You won't need a lot of knowledge, but you will be better off if you aren't starting at zero.
If you get stuck, you can post a comment and I'll try to answer your question, but you might get a faster (and better) answer by posting your question on the Neovim subreddit, or by jumping into one of the chat rooms scattered about. The Neovim official IRC is a good option, and the Vim channel on ThePrimagen's discord server is quite active as well.
You have a few options for Windows on which terminal to use, but DO NOT stick with the stock terminal that ships with windows, otherwise things won't look right. The basic terminals that ship with Windows are designed to be an entrypoint to some CLI commands and nothing more. In contrast, a "modern" terminal will support better rendering, full color support, broader font support including unicode characters, and many other things. Some names come up in the Neovim community often such as Alacritty and Wezterm, but if you are on Windows, it's hard to fault Windows Terminal for a good experience. For this guide we'll use Windows Terminal Preview, which has all the latest features and is a bit easier to configure through the interface, but standard Windows Terminal will also work with the same instuctions. Installing it is also very easy.
If for some reason you don't have access to the Microsoft store, you can install it with the MSIX bundle instead, which you can find at the official github releases page here. Just make sure you are getting the version you expect. The standard version will be listed first, then the Preview version. Find the heading for the version you want, then scroll down until you find the "Assets" section which may be collapsed. It will look like this.
This is a critical step as many of the finer points of the Neovim display rely on additional "glyphs" to display properly. What are glyphs you ask? Simple: a character in a word is technically a glyph, but so is an icon, and so is a border character or corner character, etc. Neovim uses these to build the UI one character at a time. You can find a great collection of free downloadable Nerd Fonts at Nerdfont.com. I personally like Caskaydia Cove, so I downloaded it.
Then unzip (extract) the folder that you just downloaded by right clicking it and selecting "Extract all", and then open the new, unzipped folder that pops up. You'll see a whole bunch of files, and you need to find the ones that say Windows Compatible. Edit here - this font appears to be patched now so just pick them all, but note that this download comes with Monospace and Regular versions, so you'll get both.
The rest of the setup portion of this guide will assume you are in a terminal that is running with Administrator permissions, but first you need to get said shell open. In your bottom left search tool, search for "terminal" and you should be presented with the app you just installed at the top of the list. RIGHT click it and a menu will pop up, with the option to "Run as administrator" which you need to click. You'll get a popup from User Account Control asking if you want to allow the app to make changes to your system. Click yes. You'll then get a new terminal window which will open the default prompt. Note that if you are running as administrator, the top left corner will have a shield icon indicating that.
Many of the things we're going to need can be installed using a Command Line package manager, and if your system is updated it probably already has Winget installed. You can check this by opening your new Windows Terminal that you installed, waiting for a prompt to pop up, and then running winget -v. If winget is installed, it will print the installed version number and you are good to go.
I like Chocolatey though, and it's actually a bit easier to use in this guide. You can find it here with installation instructions. You can access the generic Windows PowerShell to install it by searching for "Powershell" using the windows search tool, or locating "Windows PowerShell" in the start menu.
The terminal is the UI for using the command line, and the Shell is the program that interacts with system services and other programs to actually do anything. The shell is what gives you the prompt allowing you to input commands. Windows ships with a native shell called Command Prompt, as well as another shell called Windows Powershell, and they are both very basic with very limited features. They exist as an entry point to the CLI for various system tools, not for use in things like software development. Both of these should render the basic Neovim interface, but neither of these will work correctly for Neovim once you start adding any Neovim configuration.
We need to install something better. If you are on Windows, the cross platform version of Powershell is pretty good, so we'll use it. In your terminal, run the following command: winget install microsoft.powershell or choco install powershell-core You may be asked to hit "Y" a few times during the install, this is fine. Once the installation is complete, close your terminal app and reopen it. Then, along the top bar locate the down arrow to the right of your open tab and click it.
You won't have all of the entries I have, and those that you do have won't be in the same order, but that's fine. What you are looking for is the entry I have for just "PowerShell" which I underlined in red - NOT the "Windows PowerShell" version. If you see it, you are good to go. If not, back up and try the installation command again and you might also need to restart the computer.
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