💥 Which Key

WhichKey is a lua plugin for Neovim 0.5 that displays a popup with possible key bindings of the command you started typing. Heavily inspired by the original emacs-which-key and vim-which-key.

✨ Features

for Neovim 0.7 and higher, it uses the desc attributes of your mappings as the default label
for Neovim 0.7 and higher, new mappings will be created with a desc attribute
opens a popup with suggestions to complete a key binding
works with any setting for timeoutlen, including instantly (timeoutlen=0)
works correctly with built-in key bindings
works correctly with buffer-local mappings
extensible plugin architecture
built-in plugins:
- marks: shows your marks when you hit one of the jump keys.
- registers: shows the contents of your registers
- presets: built-in key binding help for motions, text-objects, operators, windows, nav, z and g
- spelling: spelling suggestions inside the which-key popup

⚡️ Requirements

Neovim >= 0.5.0

📦 Installation

Install the plugin with your preferred package manager:

lazy.nvim

require("lazy").setup({
  {
    "folke/which-key",
    config = function()
      vim.o.timeoutlen = 300
      require("which-key").setup({
        -- your configuration comes here
        -- or leave it empty to use the default settings
        -- refer to the configuration section below
      })
    end,
  },
})

packer

-- Lua
use {
  "folke/which-key.nvim",
  config = function()
    vim.o.timeoutlen = 300
    require("which-key").setup {
      -- your configuration comes here
      -- or leave it empty to use the default settings
      -- refer to the configuration section below
    }
  end
}

⚙️ Configuration

❗️ IMPORTANT: the timeout when WhichKey opens is controlled by the vim setting timeoutlen. Please refer to the documentation to properly set it up. Setting it to 0, will effectively always show WhichKey immediately, but a setting of 500 (500ms) is probably more appropriate.

❗️ don't create any keymappings yourself to trigger WhichKey. Unlike with vim-which-key, we do this fully automatically. Please remove any left-over triggers you might have from using vim-which-key.

🚑 You can run :checkhealth which_key to see if there's any conflicting keymaps that will prevent triggering WhichKey

WhichKey comes with the following defaults:

{
  plugins = {
    marks = true, -- shows a list of your marks on ' and `
    registers = true, -- shows your registers on " in NORMAL or <C-r> in INSERT mode
    spelling = {
      enabled = false, -- enabling this will show WhichKey when pressing z= to select spelling suggestions
      suggestions = 20, -- how many suggestions should be shown in the list?
    },
    -- the presets plugin, adds help for a bunch of default keybindings in Neovim
    -- No actual key bindings are created
    presets = {
      operators = true, -- adds help for operators like d, y, ... and registers them for motion / text object completion
      motions = true, -- adds help for motions
      text_objects = true, -- help for text objects triggered after entering an operator
      windows = true, -- default bindings on <c-w>
      nav = true, -- misc bindings to work with windows
      z = true, -- bindings for folds, spelling and others prefixed with z
      g = true, -- bindings for prefixed with g
    },
  },
  -- add operators that will trigger motion and text object completion
  -- to enable all native operators, set the preset / operators plugin above
  operators = { gc = "Comments" },
  key_labels = {
    -- override the label used to display some keys. It doesn't effect WK in any other way.
    -- For example:
    -- ["<space>"] = "SPC",
    -- ["<cr>"] = "RET",
    -- ["<tab>"] = "TAB",
  },
  icons = {
    breadcrumb = "»", -- symbol used in the command line area that shows your active key combo
    separator = "➜", -- symbol used between a key and it's label
    group = "+", -- symbol prepended to a group
  },
  popup_mappings = {
    scroll_down = '<c-d>', -- binding to scroll down inside the popup
    scroll_up = '<c-u>', -- binding to scroll up inside the popup
  },
  window = {
    border = "none", -- none, single, double, shadow
    position = "bottom", -- bottom, top
    margin = { 1, 0, 1, 0 }, -- extra window margin [top, right, bottom, left]
    padding = { 2, 2, 2, 2 }, -- extra window padding [top, right, bottom, left]
    winblend = 0
  },
  layout = {
    height = { min = 4, max = 25 }, -- min and max height of the columns
    width = { min = 20, max = 50 }, -- min and max width of the columns
    spacing = 3, -- spacing between columns
    align = "left", -- align columns left, center or right
  },
  ignore_missing = false, -- enable this to hide mappings for which you didn't specify a label
  hidden = { "<silent>", "<cmd>", "<Cmd>", "<CR>", "call", "lua", "^:", "^ "}, -- hide mapping boilerplate
  show_help = true, -- show help message on the command line when the popup is visible
  show_keys = true, -- show the currently pressed key and its label as a message in the command line
  triggers = "auto", -- automatically setup triggers
  -- triggers = {"<leader>"} -- or specify a list manually
  triggers_blacklist = {
    -- list of mode / prefixes that should never be hooked by WhichKey
    -- this is mostly relevant for key maps that start with a native binding
    -- most people should not need to change this
    i = { "j", "k" },
    v = { "j", "k" },
  },
  -- disable the WhichKey popup for certain buf types and file types.
  -- Disabled by deafult for Telescope
  disable = {
    buftypes = {},
    filetypes = { "TelescopePrompt" },
  },
}

🪄 Setup

With the default settings, WhichKey will work out of the box for most builtin keybindings, but the real power comes from documenting and organizing your own keybindings.

To document and/or setup your own mappings, you need to call the register method

local wk = require("which-key")
wk.register(mappings, opts)

Default options for opts

{
  mode = "n", -- NORMAL mode
  -- prefix: use "<leader>f" for example for mapping everything related to finding files
  -- the prefix is prepended to every mapping part of `mappings`
  prefix = "",
  buffer = nil, -- Global mappings. Specify a buffer number for buffer local mappings
  silent = true, -- use `silent` when creating keymaps
  noremap = true, -- use `noremap` when creating keymaps
  nowait = false, -- use `nowait` when creating keymaps
}

❕ When you specify a command in your mapping that starts with <Plug>, then we automatically set noremap=false, since you always want recursive keybindings in this case

⌨️ Mappings

⌨ for Neovim 0.7 and higher, which key will use the desc attribute of existing mappings as the default label

Group names use the special name key in the tables. There's multiple ways to define the mappings. wk.register can be called multiple times from anywhere in your config files.

local wk = require("which-key")
-- As an example, we will create the following mappings:
--  * <leader>ff find files
--  * <leader>fr show recent files
--  * <leader>fb Foobar
-- we'll document:
--  * <leader>fn new file
--  * <leader>fe edit file
-- and hide <leader>1

wk.register({
  f = {
    name = "file", -- optional group name
    f = { "<cmd>Telescope find_files<cr>", "Find File" }, -- create a binding with label
    r = { "<cmd>Telescope oldfiles<cr>", "Open Recent File", noremap=false, buffer = 123 }, -- additional options for creating the keymap
    n = { "New File" }, -- just a label. don't create any mapping
    e = "Edit File", -- same as above
    ["1"] = "which_key_ignore",  -- special label to hide it in the popup
    b = { function() print("bar") end, "Foobar" } -- you can also pass functions!
  },
}, { prefix = "<leader>" })

Click to see more examples

-- all of the mappings below are equivalent

-- method 2
wk.register({
  ["<leader>"] = {
    f = {
      name = "+file",
      f = { "<cmd>Telescope find_files<cr>", "Find File" },
      r = { "<cmd>Telescope oldfiles<cr>", "Open Recent File" },
      n = { "<cmd>enew<cr>", "New File" },
    },
  },
})

-- method 3
wk.register({
  ["<leader>f"] = {
    name = "+file",
    f = { "<cmd>Telescope find_files<cr>", "Find File" },
    r = { "<cmd>Telescope oldfiles<cr>", "Open Recent File" },
    n = { "<cmd>enew<cr>", "New File" },
  },
})

-- method 4
wk.register({
  ["<leader>f"] = { name = "+file" },
  ["<leader>ff"] = { "<cmd>Telescope find_files<cr>", "Find File" },
  ["<leader>fr"] = { "<cmd>Telescope oldfiles<cr>", "Open Recent File" },
  ["<leader>fn"] = { "<cmd>enew<cr>", "New File" },
})

Tips: The default label is keymap.desc or keymap.rhs or "", :h nvim_set_keymap() to get more details about desc and rhs.

🚙 Operators, Motions and Text Objects

WhichKey provides help to work with operators, motions and text objects.

[count]operator[count][text-object]

operators can be configured with the operators option
- set plugins.presets.operators to true to automatically configure vim built-in operators
- set this to false, to only include the list you configured in the operators option.
- see here for the full list part of the preset
text objects are automatically retrieved from operator pending key maps (omap)
- set plugins.presets.text_objects to true to configure built-in text objects
- see here
motions are part of the preset plugins.presets.motions setting
- see here

How to disable some operators? (like v)

-- make sure to run this code before calling setup()
-- refer to the full lists at https://github.com/folke/which-key.nvim/blob/main/lua/which-key/plugins/presets/init.lua
local presets = require("which-key.plugins.presets")
presets.operators["v"] = nil

🚀 Usage

When the WhichKey popup is open, you can use the following key bindings (they are also displayed at the bottom of the screen):

hit one of the keys to open a group or execute a key binding
<esc> to cancel and close the popup
<bs> go up one level
<c-d> scroll down
<c-u> scroll up

Apart from the automatic opening, you can also manually open WhichKey for a certain prefix:

❗️ don't create any keymappings yourself to trigger WhichKey. Unlike with vim-which-key, we do this fully automatically. Please remove any left-over triggers you might have from using vim-which-key.

:WhichKey " show all mappings
:WhichKey <leader> " show all <leader> mappings
:WhichKey <leader> v " show all <leader> mappings for VISUAL mode
:WhichKey '' v " show ALL mappings for VISUAL mode

🔥 Plugins

Four built-in plugins are included with WhichKey.

Marks

Shows a list of your buffer local and global marks when you hit ` or '

Registers

Shows a list of your buffer local and global registers when you hit " in NORMAL mode, or <c-r> in INSERT mode.

Presets

Built-in key binding help for motions, text-objects, operators, windows, nav, z and g

Spelling

When enabled, this plugin hooks into z= and replaces the full-screen spelling suggestions window by a list of suggestions within WhichKey.

🎨 Colors

The table below shows all the highlight groups defined for WhichKey with their default link.

Highlight Group	Defaults to	Description
WhichKey	Function	the key
WhichKeyGroup	Keyword	a group
WhichKeySeparator	DiffAdd	the separator between the key and its label
WhichKeyDesc	Identifier	the label of the key
WhichKeyFloat	NormalFloat	Normal in the popup window
WhichKeyBorder	FloatBorder	Normal in the popup window
WhichKeyValue	Comment	used by plugins that provide values

mdoury/which-key.nvim