Vim’s modes

For now, we’re going to learn about Vim’s two most basic modes. These are:

• normal mode
• insert mode

Normal mode is used to issue navigation and text editing commands. We’ll learn all about these commands, and how powerful they are, as the course progresses.

Insert mode is, as you may expect, used to insert text. You can think of Vim’s insert mode as being very similar to the ‘default’ state in other, non-modal editors.

Remember: Vim starts in normal mode! You can’t drop into Vim and start entering text immediately. You have to enter insert mode first. This might seem unnatural, but it makes sense when you realise that most of the time, we’re navigating the document and editing existing text as opposed to inserting new text.

A side note

Vim actually has seven so-called ‘basic modes’, and six ‘additional modes’, for a grand total of 13 unique modes. That sounds super daunting — but even expert Vimmers typically use just three or four of these modes regularly.

We won’t worry about the more advanced modes for now. We’ll revisit them later in the course.