Navigating between VIM windows in an alternative way

Question

I am using CtrlW to navigate between VIM split windows. Does there exist any different ways to do this?

For example, if I have, say, 5 split windows opened and want to navigate to the top left corner window, CtrlW is very uncomfortable as it requires many keystrokes.

Answer 1

Why not setup something like these?

nnoremap <C-h> <C-w>h nnoremap <C-j> <C-w>j nnoremap <C-k> <C-w>k nnoremap <C-l> <C-w>l 

Much quicker ...

Answer 2

You can use <number><c-w>w to switch to a particular window. So 1<c-w>w goes the the first window (top left corner) 11<c-w>w moves to the last window (here I assume you have less than 11 splits).

I also find the following mappings convenient and have them in my .vimrc

nnoremap <tab> <c-w> nnoremap <tab><tab> <c-w><c-w> 

which I use for window stitching (for some reason if I don't define the second mapping if I hit tab twice I get a message "no identifier under the cursor)

Reading the help page for CTRL-W, there is even a more convenient way than 1<c-w>w and 11<c-w>w to go to the first and last window: <c-w>t goes to the top window and <c-w>b goes to the bottom window.