This is it. A start screen for Vim.
If you start Vim without giving any filenames or piping text to it, Startify will show a pretty start screen that shows a configurable list of items:
Custom header ( empty by default ):
How about some ASCII art action?
Files from directory ( disabled by default ):
This lists all files from the current directory sorted by modification time.
Recently used files ( enabled by default ):
This uses the viminfo file to get a list of most recently used files. The list can also be filtered.
Sessions ( enabled by default ):
This will list all your sessions from a certain directory.
Bookmarks ( empty by default ):
Additionally, you can define bookmarks, thus entries for files that always should be available on the start screen.
See :h startify-options for more information.
It eases handling of loading, saving and deleting sessions by always working with one and the same directory. These commands are used for convenience:
:SLoad load a session
:SSave save a session
:SDelete delete a session
See :h startify-commands for more information.
You can either navigate to a certain entry using j/k and hit <cr> or just
key in whatever is written between the square brackets on that line. You can
even double-click anywhere on the line.
Moreover, you can open several files at one go! Navigate to an entry and hit
either b (open in same window), s (open in split) or v (open in vertical
split) for marking it. You can mark several entries and also mix different
markers. Afterwards execute all the markers in the order they were given via
<cr>.
In case you don't want to open a file, there is also e for creating an empty
buffer, i for creating an empty buffer and jumping into insert mode and q
for quitting.
When one or more files were opened by Startify, it will close automatically. You
can always reopen the screen via :Startify.
If you like any of my plugins, star it on github. This is a great way of getting feedback! Same for issues or feature requests.
Thank you for flying mhi airlines. Get your Vim on!
You can also follow me on Twitter: @mhinz
If you have no preferred installation method, I suggest using tpope's pathogen. Afterwards installing vim-startify is as easy as pie:
$ git clone https://github.com/mhinz/vim-startify ~/.vim/bundle/vim-startify
$ vim
It works without any configuration, but you might want to look into the documentation for further customization:
:Helptags " rebuilding tags files
:h startify
Marco Hinz <mh.codebro@gmail.com>
MIT license. Copyright (c) 2013 Marco Hinz.