Neovim Startup Screen

Let’s explore plugins to create a fancy startup screen.

Start-up Screen using alpha.nvim

In this article, let’s go through plugins that we can use to create a fancy startup screen.

vim-startify

Let’s start with vim-startify which should be familiar to most Vimmers.

vim-startify is a plugin that shows recently used files, bookmarks, commands, and sessions that were saved to a certain directory.

vim-startify

It is easy to get it up and running. E.g. using packer.nvim,

use { "mhinz/vim-startify" }

You can easily manage the sessions using the session commands.

:SLoad       load a session    |startify-:SLoad|
:SSave[!]    save a session    |startify-:SSave|
:SDelete[!]  delete a session  |startify-:SDelete|
:SClose      close a session   |startify-:SClose|

Customization is easy using the global variables (:h startify-options)

startify-options

For beginners, this plugin is very easy to get started with.

Tip: Check out the example configurations in the Wiki.

dashboard-nvim

dashboard-nvim is another familiar Neovim plugin we can use to create a startup dashboard.

dashboard-nvim

To install it using packer.nvim,

use {
    "glepnir/dashboard-nvim",
     config = function()
       require("config.dashboard").setup()
     end,
}

It supports vim-clap,fzf.vim or telescope.nvim as the fuzzy search plugins.

In my configuration below,

• I use telescopefor searching.
• I configure a custom header.
• I configure the custom shortcuts…