Learn Vim / vimtutor Online

vimtutor Online

The short answervimtutor is the free 30-minute tutorial built into vim — just type vimtutor in any terminal. No terminal handy? Browser ports exist (search "vimtutor browser"). It's the perfect first half hour — then you need reps to make it stick.

vimtutor ships with vim itself. It's an interactive text file that walks you through moving around, editing, saving, and quitting — enough to survive. If you have vim installed anywhere (it's on nearly every Mac, Linux box, and server), you already have it.

How to run it

WhereHow
Any terminalType vimtutor and press Enter. Works on macOS, Linux, WSL, and inside any ssh session.
A specific languagevimtutor es, vimtutor fr, etc. — many translations ship with it.
No terminalCommunity browser ports mirror the same lesson file online — search "vimtutor browser" or "vimtutor online".
NeovimRun :Tutor inside nvim for its updated version.

What vimtutor covers — and doesn't

The seven lessons cover cursor movement, deleting, inserting, motions, search, substitute, and the basics of files and windows. It's excellent. But by design it's a read-and-follow-once tour: you type the answer the lesson tells you to, once, and move on. It never repeats a skill until it's reflex, never scores you, and never tells you whether there was a faster way. That's the gap between "I did vimtutor" and "vim is in my fingers."

Where to go after vimtutor

The half hour gives you the map. Muscle memory comes from reps on real edits — and that's exactly what VimJutsu is built for. It runs a real vim engine (the same one Replit ships) in a browser tab, so like the browser vimtutor there's nothing to install — but instead of one scripted pass, it drills the practical edits you make hundreds of times a day as short missions:

Did vimtutor and it still didn't stick? That's normal — one pass isn't reps. Drill real edits in a live vim buffer, free.

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