To switch from vertical split to horizontal split fast in Vim

Léo Léopold Hertz 준영 picture Léo Léopold Hertz 준영 · Aug 13, 2009 · Viewed 145.6k times · Source

How can you switch your current windows from horizontal split to vertical split and vice versa in Vim?

I did that a moment ago by accident but I cannot find the key again.

Answer

Mark Rushakoff picture Mark Rushakoff · Aug 13, 2009

Vim mailing list says (re-formatted for better readability):

To change two vertically split windows to horizonally split

Ctrl-w t Ctrl-w K

Horizontally to vertically:

Ctrl-w t Ctrl-w H

Explanations:

Ctrl-w t makes the first (topleft) window current

Ctrl-w K moves the current window to full-width at the very top

Ctrl-w H moves the current window to full-height at far left

Note that the t is lowercase, and the K and H are uppercase.

Also, with only two windows, it seems like you can drop the Ctrl-w t part because if you're already in one of only two windows, what's the point of making it current?