visimatch.nvim

A tiny plugin to highlight text matching the current selection in visual mode 💫

Highlights are updated whenever the visual selection changes, but visimatch manages to do this without noticeable lag by only searching/applying highlights to the visible regions of buffers. This means that visimatch will continue to work smoothly even when editing very large files. It's magic!

Installation

Using Lazy:

{
    "wurli/visimatch.nvim",
    opts = {}
}

Configuration / Features

Here's the default configuration:

-- Pass this to require("visimatch").setup() or use it as the `opts` field
-- in the Lazy.nvim plugin spec above
opts = {
    -- The highlight group to apply to matched text
    hl_group = "Search",
    -- The minimum number of selected characters required to trigger highlighting
    chars_lower_limit = 5,
    -- The maximum number of selected lines to trigger highlighting for
    lines_upper_limit = 45,
    -- By default, visimatch will highlight text even if it doesn't have exactly
    -- the same spacing as the selected region. You can set this to `true` if
    -- you're not a fan of this behaviour :)
    strict_spacing = false,
    -- Visible buffers which should be highlighted. Valid options:
    -- * `"filetype"` (the default): highlight buffers with the same filetype
    -- * `"current"`: highlight matches in the current buffer only
    -- * `"all"`: highlight matches in all visible buffers
    -- * A function. This will be passed a buffer number and should return
    --   `true`/`false` to indicate whether the buffer should be highlighted.
    buffers = "filetype" ,
    -- Case-(in)nsitivity for matches. Valid options:
    -- * `true`: matches will never be case-sensitive
    -- * `false`/`{}`: matches will always be case-sensitive
    -- * a table of filetypes to use use case-insensitive matching for.
    case_insensitive = { "markdown", "text", "help" , "oil" },
    -- Enable blinking effect for the main selection
    -- This helps identify matches in large files by making the current selection blink
    blink_enabled = true,
    -- Interval for blinking effect in milliseconds
    blink_time = 500,
    -- Highlight group for the blinking effect
    blink_hl_group = "IncSearch",
    -- Highlight group for block mode matches
    block_hl_group = "Visual",
    -- Maximum width for block mode highlights
    block_max_width = 50,
}

Features

• Live Highlighting: Matches are updated in real-time as you move your cursor in visual mode
• Smart Buffer Handling: Only searches visible regions of buffers for optimal performance
• Multiple Visual Modes: Supports character-wise (v), line-wise (V), and block (^V) visual modes
• Blinking Indicator: The current selection blinks to help you identify when matches are found, especially useful in large files
• Configurable Matching: Control case sensitivity, spacing requirements, and buffer scope
• Performance Optimized: Works smoothly even in large files by limiting search scope

Limitations

Note that visimatch won't trigger in situations where the cursor doesn't move. In particular, this means that entering viw when the cursor is already at the end of the word won't trigger visimatch. In such situations, just move the cursor and highlights will trigger 💫 NB, this is a limitation of Neovim which I don't think is worth adding a workaround for yet. Hopefully this will eventually be addressed on the vim/Neovim side.