User guide / Key bindings

Editing

Development reference · View source

The one-key rows in this table are the complete direct-binding inventory for Normal and Select modes. Common prefixed gestures follow for context. Explorer keys are under Directory buffers , and Insert-mode keys under Insert and Replace modes .

Selecting whole lines

For example, x x X adds the line above the two selected lines. All four support counts and multiple selections.

Selection history

Alt-u (selection-undo) brings back a selection lost to a motion, Escape, a collapse, or removing extra cursors. Alt-U (Alt-Shift-u, selection-redo) reapplies it. Space s u and Space s U are the same commands. Like the other selection commands, they are keys rather than : commands.

• Every range, its direction, the primary range, and the selection mode come back, including x/X whole-line behavior. Text never changes.
• A counted motion, an accepted search, or a mouse drag is one step. Cancelled search previews add none. A new selection change clears redo.
• History is per pane and per buffer, works in read-only buffers, and survives switching buffers.
• Any text change, including undo/redo or an edit in another pane, starts a new history.
• Restoring never enters Insert/Replace mode or reopens a prompt.
• Limits: 128 states and 4,096 total ranges per history, for up to 32 buffers per pane. An oversized selection ends that history.
• Terminal review is not supported.

Selecting motions

In Normal mode, w, b, e, W, B, E, f, t, F, and T select the text they cross, as in Helix:

• w selects through the whitespace after the word, e through the end of the next word, and b back to the start of the previous one.
• f selects from the caret through the found character, t up to it.
• Each press starts a fresh selection, which never contains a line break.
• Anything that reads a selection reads this one: p replaces it, s and / search inside it, and * searches for it.
• Other motions still move a caret, and Select mode still extends.

Set editor.selecting_motions: false to make these motions move a caret too. A word is then selected with v first: v e d deletes to the end of the word.

Yank and paste

Yank ends the gesture. y and Y return to Normal mode and collapse each range to a caret on the last character copied, one caret per selection.

• That makes y then p a duplicate: the caret pastes past the text just yanked. A range that outlived the yank would be invisible in Normal mode and would make p replace the yanked text with itself.
• Space c y is the exception. It is also what a right click does, so it copies without disturbing the selection.

p depends on the selection, as d and c do:

• The register is not used up and the replacement stays selected, so the same content can be pasted over one range after another.
• A multi-selection from a search replaces every match at once.
• P never replaces. It is the way to paste at the start of a selection without giving it up.
• Space c p and Space c P follow the same rules from the system clipboard.

Pasting images

Ctrl-v and Alt-v paste from the system clipboard in Normal, Select, Insert, and Replace modes. When the clipboard holds an image:

1. The image is stored under .runyte/cache/images/ in the workspace, named by the hash of its content.
2. The document gets a numbered Markdown link, such as [Image 1](.runyte/cache/images/1f0a2b3c4d5e6f70.png).

• Pasting the same screenshot twice stores one file.
• The number continues past the highest [Image N] already in the document, rather than counting links.
• ? renders the link as Image 1, without the path.
• A path with a space or a parenthesis is written in angle brackets, [Image 1](<My Notes/a (copy).png>), the only spelling that survives being read back.

When text is pasted instead. A clipboard with no image, a machine with no helper that can supply one, or an unresponsive display server all paste text, exactly like Space c p.

A clipboard offering text as well as a picture counts as text. Copying spreadsheet cells or formatted text attaches a rendered bitmap for “paste as picture” commands, and taking it would lose the text you selected. A copied picture has no text beside it, which is what screenshot tools and a browser’s “Copy Image” produce. If Ctrl-v pastes text where you expected an image, the source is offering text. Once the clipboard has said it holds an image, failing to fetch it is reported rather than silently pasting text.

Both keys are unbound in Terminal Insert, where they reach the program if the outer terminal passes them through.

The cache is scratch. .runyte/ is not tracked by Git, so a pasted image travels with the working copy, not the commit.

• A document read from another clone needs its images moved somewhere the repository carries, and its links updated.
• Nothing promises to keep a file there. A document meant to outlive the session should not point into it.

Storage safety:

• Directories and images are private: 0700 and 0600 on Linux and macOS, owner-only permissions on Windows local NTFS.
• Symlinked or reparse-point storage paths, hard-linked entries, and files whose bytes disagree with their content-hash name are refused.
• Writes use exclusively created temporary files and atomic publication.

On Windows:

• Registered PNG data is read directly; supported native bitmap data is converted to PNG. Plain text still takes precedence.
• Clipboard data and converted images are limited to 64 MiB, and bitmap dimensions must fit in 64 MiB of RGBA pixels.
• Unsupported compressed bitmap layouts and custom colour profiles report an error.
• The editor waits at most one second for the clipboard. If Windows takes longer, another request reports the clipboard as busy; retry after the worker finishes.