Is there a way to get Vim-style modal editing in a Linux pager? (programming.dev)

submitted 4 months ago by CoderSupreme@programming.dev to c/linux@programming.dev

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I’d like to be able to navigate text in a pager with Vim-style modal editing (moving with hjkl and yank/paste with y/p). Is there a way to enable this in the default pager, or is there an alternative pager that supports this kind of modal behavior?

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[-] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 17 points 4 months ago

You can set Vim as your pager. If you are on Neovim, its very easy, just set this variable:

export PAGER='nvim +Man!'
export MANPAGER="${PAGER}"

Then try man grep. These variables could be set in your .bashrc in example. If you use the "original" Vim, it's a bit more complicated to setup. I did that before too, so it's definitely doable.

[-] SinTan1729@programming.dev 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

This, but I use bat since it seems to be faster for this.

Edit: I should clarify that I only use bat as the MANPAGER, since bat uses less under the hood for paging anyway. But with support for a built-in pager in the new release, perhaps it makes sense to set it as the PAGER too.

[-] Fizz@lemmy.nz 1 points 4 months ago

What's the Wayland equiv? I did a quick search and got a few different answers. Apparently bashrc still works since its your term shell but not for setting variables in the login shell. One comment said it could be ~/.profile

Do you know?

this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2025

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