Neovim Text Editor

Neovim is a Vim-fork focused on extensibility and usability, refactoring the Vim source code to improve maintainability, enable new features, and provide a modern API for plugin development. Created by Thiago de Arruda in 2014, the project has over 84,000 stars as of 2026 and is one of the most popular terminal-based text editors. Key features include: modernized architecture (refactored codebase with separation of editor core from UI, enabling embedded editors, remote development, and GUI frontends), Lua API (first-class Lua scripting replacing VimScript for plugins and configuration, enabling faster execution and better developer experience), LSP support (built-in Language Server Protocol client for intelligent code completion, go-to definition, hover documentation, diagnostics, and code actions), Treesitter integration (incremental parsing via Tree-sitter for accurate syntax highlighting, code folding, text objects, and structural editing across over 100 languages), embedded terminal (built-in terminal emulator running shell commands inside editor splits), asynchronous jobs (async API for running external commands and background tasks without blocking the editor), remote plugin architecture (msgpack-RPC API enabling plugins in Python, Ruby, Node.js, Go, and Rust), floating windows (window management with floating windows, transparency, shadows, and border styles), built-in LSP and completion (built-in snippet engine and completion framework via nvim-cmp ecosystem), plugin ecosystem (over 10,000 plugins including telescope, nvim-lspconfig, nvim-treesitter, lazy.nvim, and mason.nvim), and cross-platform (Windows, macOS, Linux, BSD, and WebAssembly).