How to use multiple cursors in Neovim 0.13

Neovim 0.13 will include native multiple cursors support, merged via pull request #41587 into Neovim Nightly on 1 September 2026, ending over a decade of community demand. The feature, popularized by Sublime Text 2 in 2011, was previously only available through plugins like multicursor.nvim and vim-multiple-cursors. The blog post by olimorris provides practical examples for using the new multicursors in Neovim Nightly.

41587 https://github.com/neovim/neovim/pull/41587 saw multiple cursors “multicursors” support merged into Neovim Nightly, scheduled for release in Neovim 0.13. It’s been in Sublime Text for over a decade yet is a divisive feature, believe it or not, in the Neovim community. But, it comes up so often on the Neovim subreddit https://www.reddit.com/r/neovim/ that it’s worth exploring. Important This post was written by hand, by me. No LLMs were used. Why do you folks so willingly hand over your thinking and penmanship? What this blog is not I won’t tell you whether you should use multiple cursors. Deciding what belongs in your workflow is a skill only you possess - keep honing it. “How do they compare to x?” - no idea. Ask Claude https://claude.ai/ or do the research yourself. A brief history UltraEdit https://wiki.ultraedit.com introduced Column Mode in the 1990s - a precursor pun intended to multiple cursors, letting you modify text in straight columns over multiple lines. But it was Sublime Text https://www.sublimetext.com that put multiple cursors on the map, introducing “Multiple Selection” in the public alpha of Sublime Text 2 https://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/sublime-text-2-public-alpha at the start of 2011. That’s where I and many others first came across the feature. Ever since, it’s been a monthly recurring question on the Neovim subreddit. A post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7672721 on Hacker News from 2014 outlined many hardcore Vim enthusiast’s positions: Vim doesn’t need multiple cursor support. Train yourself to think in Vim—you’re editing text and words, not moving a cursor. Macros and global replace already do what you want. Note An early em-dash spotted in the wild as far back as 2014… A Reddit post from 2015 https://www.reddit.com/r/neovim/comments/44g53k/multi cursor in neovim/ perfectly encapsulated the opposing view: “I am a user of sublime text and occasionnaly vim. One of the main reason that keeps me from adopting vim as my primary platform is that there is no plugin in vim that is close to sublime text in matter of multi-cursor i currently use vim-multi-cursor ” Plenty of plugins tried to fill the void: multicursor.nvim https://github.com/jake-stewart/multicursor.nvim , multicursors.nvim https://github.com/smoka7/multicursors.nvim , and the excellent vim-multiple-cursors https://github.com/terryma/vim-multiple-cursors . My own stance had always been: “anything I want from multiple cursors can be obtained with macros or search and replace” . Kevin Li’s fantastic 2017 post, “Multiple Cursors in 500 bytes of Vimscript” https://www.kevinli.co/posts/2017-01-19-multiple-cursors-in-500-bytes-of-vimscript/ , showed how to “ play a macro over search results ”. I ported his work to Lua in my own dotfiles https://github.com/olimorris/dotfiles/blob/c4e9704c3d3a8dc9a5cffb8827694f6ad769be16/.config/nvim/lua/keymaps.lua L245-L296 and never looked back. I was so impressed I offered to buy Kevin a coffee on LinkedIn - he said my praise was enough. These days I use those mappings maybe a few times a week. It wasn’t until 1 September 2026 that multiple cursors landed in Neovim core, as part of 41587 https://github.com/neovim/neovim/pull/41587 . Justin MK https://github.com/justinmk started thinking about this feature as far back as 2017 source https://www.reddit.com/r/neovim/comments/1w4f06p/comment/p773mcr/?utm source=share&utm medium=web3x&utm name=web3xcss&utm term=1&utm content=share button . Using multicursors At the time of writing this blog post, you’ll need Neovim Nightly installed. If you don’t have that, feel free to leverage my Neovim install script https://github.com/olimorris/dotfiles/blob/main/bin/nvimv which I hacked from the nvimv https://github.com/jrop/nvimv project. In this section, I’ll show you multicursors through practical examples. Copy the code snippet into Neovim and follow the instructions. Question how it feels to you and repeat a few times until you’ve memorised the patterns. Basic example For the first example, we’ll delete some characters with 3 cursors. Copy the Ruby code below into a fresh Neovim buffer: puts "one" puts "two" puts "three" - Do gg0 to put the cursor on the first line and column - Then execute the following commands in the buffer: Q " sets a cursor at 1,1 jQ " sets a cursor at 2,1 jQ " sets a cursor at 3,1 xx " delete two characters, at all three cursors - And you should see: puts "one" puts "two" puts "three" Told you it was basic So what can you learn from this? Q sets a cursor. Add more by pressing Q again. “Great, but how do I clear these cursors” ? For that, use <c-l . Using insert mode With the same example as above, but this time let’s comment them out again. This shows what you can do in insert mode: - Execute the following: gg0 Q jQ jQ I <esc <c-l - And you should see the lines are back to being commented out A cursor for every search match Want to replace Vim’s search and replace :%s/foo/bar/g with multicursors? Let’s do it. Add this to a new JavaScript buffer: js const oldName = getThing foo oldName bar oldName - Then execute: /oldName<CR " search as normal 1Q " place a cursor at every match ciw " change the word, everywhere newName<Esc " replacing with newName <c-l " clear the cursors - So you end up with: js const newName = getThing foo newName bar newName Key takeaway from this one, 1Q places a cursor at every match Numbering a list Say we have a list of items - how do we number them with multicursors? Copy this to a new buffer: Install nightly Open a scratch buffer Follow along - Then execute the following: gg0 Q jQ jQ g<C-a " Number the lines i.<space " Add a space in insert mode <c-l - And you should end up with: 1. Install nightly 2. Open a scratch buffer 3. Follow along Four examples in, hopefully you can see that multicursors just let you apply your regular Vim commands at multiple points in a buffer. Using a visual selection You can also set multicursors on a visual selection. Let’s uppercase these Ruby variables: alpha = 1 beta = 2 gamma = 3 - Execute the following in a buffer: gg0 VGQ " a cursor on every line of the selection viwU " select the inner word, uppercase it <c-l - And you should see: ALPHA = 1 BETA = 2 GAMMA = 3 Moving the cursors Want to move or walk your cursors? Let’s take the example above and set every value to 42: ALPHA = 1 BETA = 2 GAMMA = 3 - Execute the following from line 1: VGQ " a cursor on every line of the selection $ " move to the end of each line x " delete the number a42<esc " insert mode and add 42 to each line <c-l - And you should see: ALPHA = 42 BETA = 42 GAMMA = 42 One important note: visual mode enables “follow-mode” by default, meaning the cursors follow one another when you use hjkl . Follow-mode Let’s explore follow-mode in more detail, using the same buffer as above. - This time, let’s manually create some cursors: 0 Q jQ jQ - Now press w and you’ll see only the last cursor moves. Press B to get to the start of the line - Now if you do 1q= , you’ll be in follow-mode. Try moving the cursor now and you’ll see they all move. Do 2q= to exit follow-mode. Jumping between cursors That last example probably leaves you wondering: what if I want to jump to the first or second cursor? Using the same example as before: - Place a cursor on each line, same as before: gg0 Q jQ jQ - You’re back in Normal mode with three cursors placed. Now do C or C to jump between them A register, per-cursor One very cool feature: each cursor reads and writes to its own register, meaning registers are cursor-local. Macros can’t do that Let’s use a new example: alpha,1 beta,2 gamma,3 sorta - Execute the following: gg0 VGQ " a cursor per line, follow-mode on yiw " each cursor yanks its own word $p " each cursor pastes its own yank - And you should see: alpha,1alpha beta,2beta gamma,3gamma Completely pointless example, but a cool feature nonetheless. Note If you have the clipboard set to unnamedplus then the example above won’t work Replacing my old multicursors code Remember Kevin Li’s trick from earlier - playing a macro over search results? I wanted to see if multicursors could replace it. Turns out they can. Put this in a new buffer: function login user { return checkPassword user } function logout user { endSession user } function resetPassword user { return checkPassword user } - Execute: :g/checkPassword/normal 0fcQ fc jumps to the first c on the line, which lands on checkPassword . So every matching line now has a cursor on that word, enabling us to do: cwverifyPassword<Esc <c-l - And you should see: function login user { return verifyPassword user } function logout user { endSession user } function resetPassword user { return verifyPassword user } This should also work over the quickfix list with something like :cdo normal Q . One last thing One final thing that I didn’t work into an example: gQ restores the previous set of multiple cursors Summary The key thing to remember: Q inserts a multi-cursor. Practise these patterns enough and they’ll stick. A word on the implementation: I was curious to see what Neovim’s take on multiple cursors would look like. My honest reflection, after using them for under 24 hours, is that they’re excellent and feel genuinely Vim-like. Will they shift the folk in the “you don’t need multiple cursors in Vim” camp? Probably not. But I’m ripping out my old multiple cursors implementation and adopting these. 2026 is shaping up to be quite the year for Neovim