Neovim is a powerful text editor that can be customized with plugins to enhance its functionality. In this article, we will explore the top 10 essential Neovim plugins. These plugins can help improve your Neovim experience by adding features such as file searching, syntax highlighting, language server setup, and more. So if you want to take your Neovim game to the next level, keep reading!
packer.nvim is not really a plugin, but it's a plugin manager. I used to use vim-plug before moving to lua, and now, I am very satisfied with packer. Unlike vim-plug which is written in vim-script, packer.nvim is written in lua. It is one of the most powerful and feature-rich plugin managers written in Lua.
telescope.nvim is a highly extendable fuzzy finder over lists. Built on the latest awesome features from neovim core. Telescope is centred around modularity, allowing for easy customization. It has a lot of really good features, like:
Finding Files
Fuzzy Search through buffers
Searching through files and so much more.
nvim-treesitter provides a simple and easy way to use the interface for tree-sitter in Neovim and to provide some basic functionality such as highlighting based on it. It builds an Abstract Syntax Tree and helps integrate lots of features.
Nvim-treesitter is based on three interlocking features: language parsers, queries, and modules, where modules provide features – e.g., highlighting – based on queries for syntax objects extracted from a given buffer by language parsers
Now, this is one of the most important plugins on the list. Neovim v5 brought in one of the biggest updates to neovim till now and one of the most important features was native LSP. Now, you can setup language servers in neovim without having to use plugins like coc.nvim. Now, one of the downsides of using native LSP is that there's quite a lot of setup you have to do. If you don't want to do that I'd highly recommend coc.nvim since it gives you a boilerplate and brings many vscode like features to neovim.
If that's not a problem for you, then nvim-lspconfig is a very good plugin. You can combine it with the following plugins to make it even better
nvim-cmp is a completion engine for neovim written in lua.
Unlike the VS Code and coc.nvim ecosystems, Neovim doesn't provide a way for non-LSP sources to hook into its LSP client. null-ls is an attempt to bridge that gap and simplify the process of creating, sharing, and setting up LSP sources using pure Lua.
With Neovim LSP, it gets a little harder to setup things like Prettier and ESLint and that's where null-ls comes in. It provides a very simple way to plug in non-LSP sources.
luasnip is a vscode like snippet feature. It works hand in hand with nvim-cmp and you can customize your snippets.
nvim-tree is a file explorer for neovim written in lua.
One of the many bufferline solutions for neovim out there. It's completely written in Rust and if you want to emulate a Doom emacs style bufferline, this is your way to go. It has multiple features like Tab Pages, LSP Indicators, Pinning, GUI for closing and reordering, and so much more!
A blazing fast and easy to configure neovim statusline plugin written in pure lua.
There are a lot of themes you can choose from and customise the look of your statusline and you can reorder items, add plugins and a lot more.
In conclusion, Neovim is a highly customizable text editor that can be enhanced with plugins to improve your coding experience. The plugins listed in this article are just a few examples of the many options available. By adding these essential plugins to your Neovim setup, you can streamline your workflow, increase productivity, and take your coding game to the next level. So why not give them a try and see how they can transform your Neovim experience?
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