Vim EasyMotion for VS Code not activating

Question

Does anyone use Vim with VSCode? For some reason, my <leader> key (space), does not activate the easy-motion plugin (I made sure it is enabled in the settings), but just moves the cursor to the right once. I am new to VS Code, am I missing something? I still haven't figured out how .vimrc works with VS Code.

TIA!

Bailee

Looks like your .vimrc file is conflicting with the vim plugin, first disable use of vimrc and then try to use easymotion. – Deepdyed

@Deepdyed tried this, thank you. I believe VS Code does not emulate vim properly, so I might as well fully switch back to the regular terminal vim. Thank you tho! I will still appreciate any useful advice :) – Bailee

Answer 1

It's not nessesary to use .vimrc file for vscode unless you want some customized behaviors.

• Make sure you've enbaled the easymotion in vsvim settings:

  "vim.easymotion": true
  
  (in your settings.json file)

• When it comes to VSCode, easymotion will be triggered by double press <leader> key.
  Different from Terminal Vim, for example: (in your case <leader> is set to space)

  space + space + 2 + s
  
  after you press the above keys, your status bar should look like this.

Hope it would help you get into Visual Studio Code quickly.

Libb

Thank you for mentioning the double press on leader. I was confused as to why EasyMotion wasn't working when leader works fine in consoles. VS Code quirks! \o/ – Jamiejamieson

Answer 2

As far as I know, vim mode in VS code isn't configured by .vimrc file, instead, it's configured by setting.json. You can find how to configure them in this README.md.

Check that:

• "vim.leader"is set to <Space>
• go to preference -> Keyboard shortcut in VS code. Make sure that you did not customize any command to any shortcut starting with <space>. (I made this mistake before)
• the timeout length of the leader key is pretty short, make sure you press, let's say, 'w' key right after <leader><leader>

I hope this would help

Berzelius

Another thing I needed to do was disable "Add period with double-space" on OSX so that the <leader><leader> combo registered smoothly. – Wilful

@tiki: tysm for it as i was confused why easymotion was not being triggered smoothly – Knitter

Same here, I was searching endlessly for why there was a bizarre delay when using <space> as my leader key! – Going

Answer 3

This has been bugging me forever. I just realized that my mac keyboard settings have a “Add period with double-space” configuration.

Disabling this fixed the issue for me.

'System Preferences' -> 'keyboard' -> 'input sources' -> toggle off 'Add period with double-space'

MacOs 13.x

Wax