This plugin attempts to solve the issue of quitting a window, and then realizing you actually need it moments later. It simply lets you "undo" the quit, similar to the "Restore Tab" functionality of a browser.

For a visual demo, there's a screencast on youtube

Requirements

Requires Vim at version 7.4 or above.

Download and Install

The easiest way to install the plugin is with a plugin manager:

• vim-plug: https://github.com/junegunn/vim-plug
• Vundle: https://github.com/VundleVim/Vundle.vim

If you use one, just follow the instructions in its documentation.

You can install the plugin yourself using Vim's packages functionality by cloning the project (or adding it as a submodule) under ~/.vim/pack/<any-name>/start/. For example:

mkdir -p ~/.vim/pack/andrewradev/start
cd ~/.vim/pack/andrewradev/start
git clone https://github.com/andrewradev/undoquit.vim.git

# to generate documentation tags:
vim -u NONE -c "helptags undoquit.vim/doc" -c q

This should automatically load the plugin for you when Vim starts. Alternatively, you can add it to ~/.vim/pack/<any-name>/opt/ instead and load it in your .vimrc manually with:

packadd undoquit

If you'd rather not use git, you can download the files from the "releases" tab and unzip them in the relevant directory: https://github.com/AndrewRadev/undoquit.vim/releases.

Usage

Whenever you execute a :quit on a window, that window's position is stored in a stack. Pressing <c-w>u (or executing the :Undoquit command) is going to "undo" that quit, restoring the window to its original position.

Note that this only works on buffers that are "listed", so it won't restore the quickfix window or the NERDTree, but it's assumed that you don't really need this functionality for these kinds of buffers.

Working with tabs

The <c-w>u mapping will restore windows you've closed one by one, regardless if they're in the current tab, or in a different one. To restore a full tab's worth of windows, you can use <c-w>U. That mapping will:

• Restore all windows that you've previously closed in the current tab, if there are any
• Restore all windows in a previously-closed tab

However, it's important to note that the plugin only keeps track of windows closed with :quit or ZZ. It uses the QuitPre event to store a window's information before it's closed, and there is no similar event for other methods of closing windows.

This means that the :tabclose command will not save the closed windows in history. In case this is a command that's part of your workflow, the plugin provides the :UndoableTabclose command that should be usable in the same way as the built-in :tabclose:

:UndoableTabclose[!]
:{count}UndoableTabclose[!]
:UndoableTabclose[!] {count}

The plugin also doesn't work for <c-w>c, since that mapping doesn't throw a QuitPre autocommand either. If you use it, you could make it work by calling the undoquit "save history" function manually:

nnoremap <c-w>c :call undoquit#SaveWindowQuitHistory()<cr><c-w>c

Settings

Use the g:undoquit_mapping variable to set the mapping for the window restore action. Example:

" default: <c-w>u
let g:undoquit_mapping = '_u'

Use g:undoquit_tab_mapping for the keybinding that restores a full tab of windows:

" default: <c-w>U
let g:undoquit_tab_mapping = '_U'

Set any of these variables to an empty string to avoid defining a mapping at all. You could still use the plugin via its commands, :Undoquit and :UndoquitTab.

Contributing

Pull requests are welcome, but take a look at CONTRIBUTING.md first for some guidelines.