Note: This site is currently "Under construction". I'm migrating to a new version of my site building software. Lots of things are in a state of disrepair as a result (for example, footnote links aren't working). It's all part of the process of building in public. Most things should still be readable though.

Show What Keys Neovim Thinks You Pressed

Use Ctrlv in Insert mode to see the Neovim code for the next key or key combo you press

Introduction

I use a moonlander keyboard. One reason I got it is the "layers" feature that lets me setup keys with additional functionality. For example, if I hold down the Enter and press g the keyboard sends Option + Shift + g instead. I have Neovim configured to open my Grimoire when it receives that combo.

My keyboard mappings are kind of all over the place. I can always go look at the configuration to find out what a particular key does on a specific layer. That's not necessary, though. Neovim has a built in feature that displays what's pressed. It looks like this:

The Steps

  1. Switch to insert mode with i if you aren't already there

  2. Press Ctrl + v which temporarily outputs a `^`` character

  3. Press a key or key combination to see Neovim's representation of what you pressed

The Output

When I hit Enter + g (and the keyboard sends Option + Shift + g), Neovim displays:

Code

<M-G>

Some things to note about that:

  • Internally, Neovim doesn't use Mac's Option keys. It uses a Meta key signal instead. I have my terminal setup to translate Option to Meta automatically (see below). The net effet of that is that we see `

  • The "G" is upper case in the output because the Shift key was part of the signal sent. The same signal could be represented with an explict Shift and a lowercase "g". So, instead of `

Usage

The reason I need to figure out the details of the keypresses is to set up hotkey triggers in my config. For example, if I wanted Enter + a to print "Hello, World" whenever I pressed it I'd used the techniqe above to fiugre out that Neovim sees it as:

Code

<M-A>

I can use that to make the following to print out "Hello, World" whenever I hit the key in Normal mode.

~/.config/nvim/after/plugin/hello-world.lua

vim.keymap.set('n', '<M-A>', function() 
  print("Hello, World")
end, { desc = "Prints Hello World" })

Wrapping Up

This is one of those small but nice reductions of friction. Since it's so easy to see what my key mappings are I'm a lot more likely to use them. And, I should point out, things aren't always so stright forward, I've got Enter + j mapped to Option + Shift + F11 to avoid conflicting with other mappings. Figuring out what's what quickly is, if you'll forgive the pun, key.

References