Press escape, type :q (colon q), and press enter.
It’s a long-standing joke that quitting Vim is *incredibly* hard, but the above should work in pretty much every situation. Let’s unpack it.
Pressing escape to return to normal mode
Vim is a *modal* text editor, meaning that you can enter different *modes* to do different things. By default, Vim is in normal mode, which allows you to use the hjkl keys to navigate your document. There’s also insert, visual, command-line, select, and ex — for now, we’ll just focus on getting *out* of those modes into normal mode. You can do this by pressing the ESC (escape) key.
Type :q (colon q) and press enter
You can enter commands into Vim by pressing the colon (:) key. You should see a colon (and whatever you type next) in the command bar at the bottom of your Vim window.
Now, you can use the q command (short for quit) to quit command. Press enter, and you’ll be back out of Vim.
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If you want to learn the rest of Vim, check out my video tutorial on getting started. It’s a little old, but like Vim, it still works splendidly. Enjoy!
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