Updated on October 5, 2021 in #vim

Remapping x, X and Del in Vim to Not Overwrite Your Clipboard

A few remappings that let you delete characters or a selection of characters, although it does change the default behavior of Vim.

Deleting 1 or more characters without wanting them to overwrite what’s in my clipboard is something I do many times a day. It’s pretty easy to remap what Vim provides by default to do this. This 3 minute video shows how it works and how to do it.

# Demo Video

Vim Configuration

noremap x "_x
noremap X "_x
noremap <Del> "_x

Timestamps

• 0:09 – Going over how the remappings work in Vim
• 0:56 – Checking out the remappings in Vim
• 2:02 – The remappings work with visual selection mode too
• 2:19 – This does change a default behavior of Vim

Reference Links

• Direct link to my vimrc file with these remappings
• https://github.com/nickjj/dotfiles

Are you going to use these remappings in your vimrc? Let me know below.