VimFx – Vim keyboard shortcuts for Firefox

Note: VimFx is a legacy extension for Firefox 115+, requiring the LegacyFox shim (see below).

VimFx is a Firefox extension which adds short, Vim-style keyboard shortcuts for browsing and navigation, for a near mouseless experience.

• Doesn’t change your browser in any way. Everything can be disabled.
• Easy for beginners, powerful for advanced users. Not just for Vim fanatics.
• Modeled after Vimium for Chrome.

New to VimFx? Check out Questions & Answers!
Power user? Make a config file!
In either case, have look at the the documentation and the wiki.

VimFx is made by these awesome people.

Installation Instructions

Before installing VimFx, make sure LegacyFox is installed. On Linux, you can issue the commands below; on other operating systems, you can copy the files from the LegacyFox repository into your Firefox installation directory.

git clone https://git.gir.st/LegacyFox.git 
cd LegacyFox
sudo make install  # set DESTDIR= for custom install location

Why VimFx was created

Even before Vimium there was Vimperator for Firefox. In my opinion, Vimperator has too many features and aggressively changes the default Firefox appearance and behavior. Vimium is exactly what I need in terms of added functionality, but for Chrome. That’s why I decided to develop a similar extension for Firefox.

 VimFx will be nice to your browser and to your habits. Promise.

– Anton Khodakivskiy, VimFx’s original author.

Key Features

VimFx has concise shortcuts for most commonly performed actions. Many simply invoke standard Firefox features. That is preferred over re-implementing similar functionality.

Press f to mark links, text inputs and buttons on the page. Then either type the hint or the text of a marked element to click it. This command has many variations, for example to copy links or open them in new tabs.

Search with / and cycle between matches with n and N.

Open a new tab with t, close it with x. Reopen it again with X. Switch between tabs with J and K, or some of the several other tab commands.

Scrolling left/down/up/right: h, j, k, l.
Top/Bottom: gg, G.
Page up/down: space, shift-space.
Half a page: d, u.

Use Caret mode to copy text without using the mouse.

There are of course many more shortcuts! Press ? to see them all, and then / to search among them. Click on a command or open VimFx’s options page in the Add-ons Manager to customize the default shortcuts.

You can temporarily disable VimFx by using Ignore mode. Press i to enter it, and shift-escape to exit. Use the blacklist to automatically enter Ignore mode on specific sites.

There’s also an article on ghacks.net which is a good introduction.

Alternatives

If you’re looking for a WebExtension replacement for VimFx, check out these extensions:

• Vimium-FF
• Saka Key
• Vim Vixen
• Tridactyl