Installing

Installing MacVim

Main Options

1. Recommended: Download official binary release directly. MacVim will automatically check for updates and prompt for installation.
   1. The minimum requirement for the default binary is macOS 10.13. If you are on macOS 10.9 - 10.12, make sure to download the "legacy" version.
   2. You can also use Homebrew Cask which does the same thing of downloading the official binary release for you, by doing brew install --cask macvim-app.
   3. You could also download newer pre-release versions (if one exists) that are not as fully tested and they do not come with full release notes or a legacy version. This allows you to get a more up-to-date version of Vim without waiting for the official full release. If you run into issues, please try the full release first.
2. Use Homebrew. Download it and do brew install macvim in a terminal. If you do this, MacVim will not automatically check for updates, and the updating is handled by Homebrew instead.

Other methods

• Build yourself: See Building for how to build MacVim yourself.
• Other package managers: See for other package managers that could be used to install MacVim.
• Nightly builds: If you would like a build of the latest development version, visit , select the newest run, and download MacVim.dmg from it (you need to be logged in to GitHub).

  • You can also do the same in the terminal by using the GitHub command-line tool gh:

    gh run download \
        -R macvim-dev/macvim -n MacVim.dmg \
        $(gh run list -R macvim-dev/macvim -w ci-macvim.yaml -L 1 -e push -b master -s success --json databaseId -q '.[0].databaseId')

  • Note: This version of MacVim is not signed/notarized and is intended for testing only. You will have to manually go to macOS Security settings and allow it to be run, or use the terminal command xattr -d com.apple.quarantine MacVim.app. Only do this if you are comfortable with in-development builds and want to try out the latest work-in-progress features and fixes.

Uninstalling MacVim

If you installed MacVim using the recommended official binary release, you can simply remove /Applications/MacVim.app. Additionally, you can optionally remove the following files and folders in ~/Library to remove all traces of the program:

• Caches/org.vim.MacVim/
• Preferences: (warning: deleting these will remove all MacVim settings)
  • Preferences/org.vim.MacVim.plist
  • Preferences/org.vim.MacVim.LSSharedFileList.plist
• Only necessary for MacVim installed before r183:
  • WebKit/org.vim.MacVim/
  • HTTPStorages/org.vim.MacVim/

Otherwise, follow the instructions of the package manager (e.g. Homebrew) that you used.