SimpleNvimEditor

A simple, fast, native Neovim GUI written in Go, using the Gio UI toolkit with a minimalist design.

Why another Neovim GUI?

• Neovim-qt is not actively maintained. I once filed a bug that took several months to get the maintainer's attention. Because the maintainer is busy with other projects, I ended up fixing it myself and submitting a pull request — which then took several more months to get merged.
• goneovim depends on a Qt binding that has been deprecated. Because of this, the maintainer has decided to abandon the project.
• Neovide has too many dependencies and is too heavy for my needs.
• Many other GUIs cannot run on all three platforms (macOS, Linux, Windows) or have other significant limitations.

As a minimalist, I just want a simple, lightweight GUI that works on all my machines. There are surprisingly few candidates that meet that bar.

What it offers

• It's just Neovim. A GUI shell around a real nvim process (nvim_ui_attach), not a fork or reimplementation of the editor.
• Native window rendering via Gio — no Electron, no embedded browser.
• Cross-platform: Linux, macOS, and Windows.
• Multigrid-aware rendering — window splits and floating windows (like completion popups) are drawn wherever Nvim actually places them.
• Cursor shape (block/beam/underline) synced live from Nvim's mode info.
• Keyboard and mouse input, including scroll wheel, mapped faithfully to Nvim's own input protocol.
• Live window resizing.
• A small, plain config.toml for font and Nvim-launch settings.
• Nerd Font support.
• GPU rendering from Go/Gio.
• Can serve as a terminal with simplenvim --maximized -- -c term -c startinsert, so you do not need separate terminal software.

Simple and pure: no bloat, no bundled plugin marketplace, and no telemetry.

Installing

Grab a build for your platform from the Releases page. Nightly pre-releases are built from main.

Neovim 0.9+ must be installed and on your PATH — this is a GUI for Neovim, not a copy of it.

Linux: .deb / .rpm

Install the downloaded package with an explicit path (the leading ./ matters — without it, apt looks for a package named simplenvim_...):

sudo apt install ./simplenvim_<version>_linux_amd64.deb   # Debian/Ubuntu
sudo dnf install ./simplenvim_<version>_linux_amd64.rpm   # Fedora/RHEL

If apt prints:

Notice: Download is performed unsandboxed as root as file '...' couldn't be
accessed by user '_apt'. - pkgAcquire::Run (13: Permission denied)

nothing is wrong with the package. Apt drops privileges to the unprivileged _apt user to copy the file, and that user can't traverse a private home directory such as a 0700 ~/Downloads. Apt falls back to running as root and the install still succeeds — it is a notice, not an error.

To silence it, install from a world-traversable directory instead:

cp simplenvim_<version>_linux_amd64.deb /tmp/
sudo apt install /tmp/simplenvim_<version>_linux_amd64.deb

Prefer this over loosening the permissions on your home directory.

First launch: unsigned builds

Releases are not code-signed (that requires a paid Apple developer account and a Windows certificate). The binaries are fine; the OS just can't verify who made them, so it warns on first launch. And all installation packages are built exclusively by the GitHub free tier CI/CD pipeline.

• macOS — right-click the app and choose Open, or:

  xattr -c /Applications/SimpleNvimEditor.app

• Windows — on the SmartScreen prompt, click More info → Run anyway.

Every release does carry GitHub build provenance, so you can cryptographically confirm a download really was built by this repo's CI:

gh attestation verify <downloaded-file> -R kgfly/SimpleNvimEditor

Configuration

SimpleNvimEditor reads an optional TOML configuration file from your OS's standard config directory. It's entirely optional — sane defaults apply if it's missing, or if any field is left out:

OS	Path
Linux	~/.config/simplenvimeditor/config.toml
macOS	~/Library/Application Support/simplenvimeditor/config.toml
Windows	%AppData%\simplenvimeditor\config.toml

[editor]
font_size = 14
font_family = "monospace"  # set to your preferred font, e.g. "Hack Nerd Font Mono"
alt_is_meta = true         # send Alt/Option chords to Nvim as <A-...>

[nvim]
command = "nvim"           # path or PATH-resolved name
extra_args = []            # extra args passed straight to nvim

You don't need to create this file to get started — the defaults shown above are exactly what's used if it's absent.

alt_is_meta

This setting is only meaningful on macOS, where Option is a composing key: Option-a types å and Option-Shift-a types Å. Keeping the default true means those chords go to Nvim so <A-a> and <A-A> mappings fire. Set it to false if you would rather type composed characters than use Option as Meta.

On Linux and Windows, Alt is already a pure command modifier and never produces text, so this setting has no effect there.

Command-line arguments

Use --maximized to start with a maximized window, or --nvim <path> to use a specific Neovim executable. File arguments are forwarded to Neovim. Put -- before Neovim flags or commands so SimpleNvimEditor does not interpret them as its own options:

simplenvim --maximized -- -c term -c 'edit ~/todo.txt'

Reporting issues

If an issue of yours was closed but the problem isn't actually fixed, comment /reopen on it. A bot reopens it automatically: no write access is needed, and you don't have to wait for a maintainer.

This only works on issues you opened, and /reopen must start the comment.

Documentation

• doc/developer.md — everything about building, running, testing, and contributing.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.