Cancel split window in Vim

Question

Press Control+w, then hit q to close each window at a time.

Update: Also consider eckes answer which may be more useful to you, involving :on (read below) if you don't want to do it one window at a time.

To close all splits, I usually place the cursor in the window that shall be the on-ly visible one and then do :on which makes the current window the on-ly visible window. Nice mnemonic to remember.

---

Edit: :help :on showed me that these commands are the same:

• :on
• :only
• CTRL-w CTRL-o
• And yes, also CTRL-W o has the same effect (as Nathan answered).

Each of these four closes all windows except the active one.

to close all windows but the current one use:

CTRL+w, o

That is, first CTRL+w and then o.

Two alternatives for closing the current window are ZZ and ZQ, which will, respectively, save and not save changes to the displayed buffer.

From :help opening-window (search for "Closing a window" - /Closing a window)

• :q[uit] close the current window and buffer. If it is the last window it will also exit vim
• :bd[elete] unload the current buffer and close the current window
• :qa[all] or :quita[ll] will close all buffers and windows and exit vim (:qa! to force without saving changes)
• :clo[se] close the current window but keep the buffer open. If there is only one window this command fails
• :hid[e] hide the buffer in the current window (Read more at :help hidden)
• :on[ly] close all other windows but leave all buffers open