Tabpages
Tabpages allow you to use different window configurations simultaneously. For example you can have a tabpage showing two buffers side by side and another tabpage having a single document taking all the space of the screen.
Tabpages are shown as numbers at the right of the top tabline:
To switch to one of them, you just have to press its number in the keyboard:
- 1 .. 9:
switch to tabpage with that number
At first, the name tabpages, or tabs for short, can be a bit misleading. You may be used to other editors where opening a file opens a tab, and where closing the tab closes the file itself. The word tab in Vim means something different, as it refers to a layout of windows.
In Vim (and Vem by extension):
Files are opened as buffers. The list of buffers always stays the same no matter how many windows or tabpages are present.
Windows are just viewports over buffers and you can use them to display more than one buffer at a time on the screen.
Tabpages are different layouts of windows.
Opening and closing tabpages
You have the following commands available to work with tabpages:
- Ctrl-w Ctrl-^:
create new tabpage.
Use Ctrl-w Ctrl-6 if pressing Ctrl-^ is not possible in your keyboard.
To close a tabpage, close all the windows inside it or use:
:tabclose