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/ setup guide·5 min read·beginner

Install the LazyVim distro.

One clone turns a bare Neovim into a fully configured IDE. Here's what LazyVim actually is, how it differs from hand-rolling your own lazy.nvim config, and how to install and verify it — before you touch a single keybinding.

/ 01

What LazyVim actually is

lazy.nvim is a plugin manager — it loads whatever plugin specs you write yourself, and gives you an empty lua/plugins/ folder to fill in. LazyVim is a different thing built on top of it: a full starter config with a curated set of plugins, keymaps, and UI already wired together. Instead of assembling an editor piece by piece, you clone a finished one and start driving it.

That trade-off is the whole point. Hand-rolling lazy.nvim means you decide every plugin and every keybinding from scratch. Installing LazyVim means someone already made those calls — a sane default is <leader>e for a file sidebar, <leader>ff for fuzzy find, LSP and Treesitter configured out of the box — and you customize from there instead of starting at zero.

/ 02

What you need first

LazyVim needs a recent Neovim — 0.11.2 or later. Check what you're running:

// snippet
nvim --version | head -1

Don't have Neovim yet? Install it first, then come back here. You'll also need git, and a Nerd Font in your terminal so LazyVim's icons render instead of showing as boxes — not a blocker, just worth having.

/ 03

Clone the starter

LazyVim ships an official starter repo that's meant to be cloned straight into your config directory.

  1. 01

    Back up any existing config

    This replaces your whole Neovim config, not just adds to it — unlike the lazy.nvim bootstrap, which only touched one file.

    // snippet
    mv ~/.config/nvim ~/.config/nvim.bak
  2. 02

    Clone it in

    // snippet
    git clone https://github.com/LazyVim/starter ~/.config/nvim
rm -rf ~/.config/nvim/.git

    That second line matters: without it, ~/.config/nvim stays a clone of LazyVim's own repo. Removing .git frees you to turn your config into your own repo later, with your own customizations tracked.

/ 04

First launch

// snippet
nvim

The first launch bootstraps lazy.nvim, then installs LazyVim's entire default plugin set — Treesitter parsers compile, a statusline and bufferline appear, LSP tooling installs via Mason. This takes a minute or two and looks busy. That's expected, not a failure — let it finish.

/ 05

Verify it's alive

Once the install finishes and you're looking at a normal buffer:

~/.config/nvimready
:checkhealth lazyvim                   // should report no errors
// bufferline across the top, statusline at the bottom
<Space>e                                // opens the file sidebar

If <leader>e opens a file tree and :checkhealth lazyvim comes back clean, LazyVim is fully installed.

/ 06

Now practice

You're running the same LazyVim setup the sandbox uses. Time to actually drive it.

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/ 06 — Now Practice

New keybinding → new muscle memory.

Reading only gets you so far. Your fingers need reps.

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