You dont need Vim swap files. And how to get rid of them

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes.

Almost all IDEs today have ‘autosave’ feature. That is, you don't need to explicitly save a file. The file is automatically saved as you type, so that even if your computer crashes, you don't lose data. This makes me wonder why Vim's default behavior is of using swap files. Swap files are annoying. I've seen all Vim developers, including me, struggle with swap files at one point in their life.

There is a Vim plugin for autosaving, and it has saved a lot of my time. I have used the plugin such that every time I enter normal mode (after making edits in Insert mode), it autosaves file. And more importantly, I have disabled swap file creation by Vim. It's really that simple folks. You don't really need swap files 99.99% of the times.

How to Vim autosave

Download the plugin, which is present at https://github.com/907th/vim-auto-save, and put the plugin file in ~/.vim/plugin directory:

mkdir -p ~/.vim/plugin
cd ~/.vim/plugin
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/907th/vim-auto-save/master/plugin/AutoSave.vim

Now open the ~/.vimrc file and add these lines. Comments are self-explanatory.

# Enable autosave plugin
let g:auto_save = 1

# Only save in Normal mode periodically. If the value is changed to '1',
# then changes are saved when you are in Insert mode too, as you type, but
# I would say prefer not save in Insert mode
let g:auto_save_in_insert_mode = 0

# Silently autosave. If you disable this option by changing value to '0',
# then in the vim status, it will display "(AutoSaved at <current time>)" all
# the time, which might get annoying
let g:auto_save_silent = 1

# And now turn Vim swapfile off
set noswapfile

Things to note

There are a few things to note when you switch to this ‘autosave, no swap files’ mode:

  1. You can't just do a :q! to discard unsaved changes. Autosave already has saved your changes! So the only real way to discard your changes is to undo all the changes you've made (u key) and then exit the file.

  2. Earlier, you can't modify a Vim file which is already open in another terminal. Now too Vim will throw a warning message. The difference is how you're notified of it. Previously, even before opening the file Vim will say that a swap file exists. But now, Vim will allow you to open the file, and start editing it too. Only when you come out of Insert mode, AND you are making a conflicting change, will it say:

    WARNING: The file has been changed since reading it!!!
Do you really want to write to it (y/n)?

    A conflicting change basically means you are making edits at a place where edits are already made in another terminal where that same file is open. For example, the file initially had ‘one’ written on first line when it's opened in both terminals. In one terminal, you add a second line saying ‘two’, and in another terminal when you add the second line saying ‘three’, we have a conflict. This is because we are writing ‘three’ at line number 2 where ‘two’ is alredy written (from another terminal)

After reading these ‘things to note’, you might be thinking if it is really a good idea to autosave. Everybody is entitled to have an opinion. My opinion is that over a longer time period, getting rid of swap files saved me much more headache. I just have to be careful while exiting files.

I hope this helps. Questions, comments, suggestions, feedback? Comment :)

Thank you.

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