Leaving insert mode without an escape key
Have you worked on an iPad or other device and suddenly realised that you can’t go back to normal mode because there’s no esc key on the keyboard?
CursorHoldI
Someone mentioned this on Twitter and there was a plethora of answers but I was
thinking there must be an easier way. I remembered the trick I use for turning
off caps lock and there should be something similar in insert mode,
and there is; CursorHoldI is the same command but in insert mode and to
leave insert mode we have stopinsert. Since I already use updatetime
for caps lock I have to store it somewhere while I’m in insert mode and set it
back again when leaving. I set the timeout for insert mode to 5 seconds and
tried it. I entered insert mode, turned on caps lock and waited. After 5 seconds
Vim escaped to normal mode and turned off caps lock. This is the snippet of code
to put in .vimrc.
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" automatically leave insert mode after 'updatetime' milliseconds of inaction
au CursorHoldI * stopinsert
" set 'updatetime' to 5 seconds when in insert mode
au InsertEnter * let updaterestore=&updatetime | set updatetime=5000
au InsertLeave * let &updatetime=updaterestore
inoremap
There is also another way and that is to remap a key combination with inoremap
to escape back to normal mode. Use a combination of keys the you’re not likely
to use when you write. For me ÖÖ works for that. In .vimrc that would
look like this:
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inoremap ÖÖ <esc>
That means that I can type ÖÖ in insert mode and Vim will escape into normal mode. I tried that too.
ctrl+o
There is actually a third way and that is to run stopinsert in command mode with
ctrl+o. Ctrl+o lets you run one command in command mode and after that Vim goes
back to insert mode. But if you run :stopinsert Vim will escape into
normal mode.