neovim-on-windows

This is a guide to how I've set up Neovim on Windows 11.

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Ecosystems: Windows, Neovim

Neovim on Windows

This is a guide to how I've set up Neovim on Windows 11 and Windows 10.

The result will be Neovim with:

  • Windows Terminal as its UI.
  • An application you can associate with file types in Windows.
  • An Edit in Neovim menu item in the Windows context menu in Explorer.
  • Optional installation of LazyVim and supporting software to get treesitter
    syntax highlighting and LSPs functioning.

Install Neovim

You can install Neovim with or without local administrator rights on your system. However, if you install it without administrator some steps require alternatives to be performed, or cannot be performed, or require manual editing of the provided registry and JSON files. The following symbols below will note this:

  • 🔐 Requires administrator privileges.
  • 🧑 Alternate step for non-administrators.
  • 📝 Modification of the step or editing of the file required if you installed
    Neovim in an alternate location.

Prerequisites:

🔐 Install Neovim :

winget install neovim.neovim

🧑 Download the nvim-win64.zip file from here and unzip and copy the Neovim folder to your preferred location and Add C:\path\to\Neovim\bin to your path.

Copy the Neovim favicon.ico to C:\Program Files\Neovim📝.

Add Directory to your Executable Path

Some software in this guide requires the Path to be update so it can be found. Replace <path> in this PowerShell snippet and run it to add the directory to your path:

[Environment]::SetEnvironment("Path", $env:Path + ";<path>", "User")

Themes

I'm using the Flexoki theme which supports both Windows Terminal and Neovim. Feel free to choose your own.

Configure Windows Terminal

Open Windows Terminal and open the Settings then click on Open JSON file. Find the section with other terminal profiles and copy paste the contents of windows_terminal_profile.json📝.

Repeat this for windows_terminal_theme.json putting it where the other themes are if you want to use the Flexoki theme.

You should now be able to launch Neovim from the Windows Terminal menu.

Configure the Windows 11 Context Menu

Open the Custom Context Menu application. Click on the folder icon for Open Menu Config Folder and copy these files into the folder:

  • Diff in Neovim.json📝
  • Edit in Neovim.json📝
  • Edit in Neovim Clean.json📝 - Runs Neovim without loading your plugins and
    configuration.

You will need to sign out then sign in again or restart explorer.exe in Task Manager for the change to take effect.

You should now have a second Open with menu. You can customise the name of this with Custom Context Menu.

Windows 10 Only: Configure the Windows 10 Context Menu

The Windows 10 context menu can also be configured by:

🔐 Import HKCR_win10_nvim_context_menu.reg file.

or

🧑 Import HKCU_win10_nvim_context_menu.reg📝 file.

Add Neovim as a Suggested App

To associate Neovim with different file types add it as a suggested application.

🔐 Import HKCR_applications_nvim.reg then restart explorer.exe.

or

🧑 Import HKCU_applications_nvim.reg📝 then restart explorer.exe.

Associate File Types with Neovim

Open Windows Settings/Apps/Default apps and set Neovim to be the default for files you want to use it for or you can do it when you open the file type.

For example:

.bash
.c
.cfg
.config
.cpp
.gitconfig
.gitignore
.h
.hcl
.inf
.ini
.java
.js
.json
.log
.lua
.markdown
.md
.php
.pl
.py
.rb
.sh
.tf
.tfvars
.txt
.vim
.yaml
.yml

Optional: Install LazyVim

LazyVim is a Neovim distribution that provides a range of plugins, syntax highlighting using treesitter, and LSPs.

It took me a while to get it working on Windows 10 and 11, particularly compiling the treesitter parsers, so the steps below are here to document how I did it.

Prerequisites:

  • Open a Windows PowerShell terminal and install these packages using winget:

Note: if you do not have administrator rights then some functionality will be missing.

  • Close the terminal.
  • Open a new PowerShell terminal and type $Env:Path and check that
    ...\Neovim\bin there as well as zig.
  • Optional:
    Edit the PowerShell terminal profile and change the font to your preferred
    Nerd Font.
  • Follow the
    LazyVim Windows installation instructions.

If you want to Flexoki as your Neovim theme copy theme.lua to $Env:LOCALAPPDATA\nvim\lua\plugins.

Now you can run nvim and you should see it download LazyVim, its plugins, compiling treesitter parsers, and installing LSPs.

By default there are around 24 treesitter parsers that LazyVim includes and it seems to not want to compile them all in one go. Quitting and starting nvim again around 5-10 times seems to sort it out.