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How to try Neovim distros without messing up your config

1 min read
vim tools

There are many Neovim “distros” available (pre-configured setups that give you a full IDE experience out of the box). The popular ones include:

If you want to start from scratch, Kickstart gives you a minimal, well-commented starting point.

The problem

Trying a new distro usually means overwriting your existing config. That’s annoying if you just want to test something out.

The solution: NVIM_APPNAME

Neovim has a built-in feature (:help NVIM_APPNAME) that lets you run multiple configs completely independently. Each gets its own .config, .local, and .cache directories.

Clone the distro to ~/.config with a custom name:

cd ~/.config
git clone https://github.com/LazyVim/starter lazyvim

Run it with NVIM_APPNAME:

NVIM_APPNAME=lazyvim nvim

Set an alias for easy access:

alias lazyvim="NVIM_APPNAME=lazyvim nvim"

Now you can try as many configs as you want without them interfering with each other. Your original nvim command still uses your default config.