🌐 The Mouse is Dead: Why Vimium C is the Ultimate Upgrade for Your Terminal Workflow
I just finished integrating LibreWolf with my custom Arch/Hyprland setup, and the single most vital upgrade isn't a daemon or a Wayland patch, it's the browser extension: Vimium C.
If you spend your life in the terminal, why are you still forced to grab a mouse to click a link or scroll a web page? The mouse is inefficiency; it’s visual clutter. Vimium C eliminates it entirely, finally unifying the web browser with your Tmux and Neovim workflow. The browser stops being a graphical application and starts behaving like just another fast terminal pane.
🚀 Tier 1: The Core Protocol (Movement & Flow)
The genius of Vimium C is that it instantly maps your existing muscle memory to the browser. Your hand never leaves the home row.
* Small Scrolls: You use j and k to move line-by-line. That's exactly what you do to scroll the browser page. No more searching for the tiny scroll bar!
* Page Jumps: Need to get to the middle of an article? d and u jump by entire page lengths, maintaining fluid flow.
* Absolute Position: Use gg to instantly snap to the top and G to slam the scrollbar to the bottom.
* History is Easy: H goes back in history, and L goes forward. It’s cleaner than searching for tiny arrow icons.
✨ Tier 2: The Magic Key (f for Link Hints)
This is the single feature that pays for the extension ten times over.
When you want to click a link, press f. The browser instantly overlays small, single or double-letter hints over every clickable link on the screen. You just type the two letters and:
* f + [Hint]: Opens the link in the current tab.
* F + [Hint]: Opens the link in a new background tab.
No matter how complex the website, the keyboard finds the target instantly. It’s pure digital assassination.
🛠 Tier 3: Command Center Control
For power users, Vimium C provides essential quality-of-life bindings that are missing from default browsers:
* URL Management: Use gu to quickly move up one directory level in the URL hierarchy. Use gU to instantly snap back to the site's root domain.
* Input & Focus: Hit gi to instantly focus the next text box (login field, search bar, etc.), perfect for jumping right into a form.
* Tab Switching: gt and gT (or J and K depending on your mapping) allow you to cycle through your hundreds of tabs without reaching for the mouse.
* Tab Murder/Restore: x closes the current tab cleanly, and X restores the tab you just closed.
🤯 Tier 4: Search & Clipboard Integration
* Vomnibar Access: Press o to bring up the high-speed search bar (the Vomnibar). Use o for the current tab, or O (Shift+o) to open the search result in a new tab. This replaces your need for a dedicated launcher/search window most of the time.
* Tab Searching: Hit T (Shift+t) inside the Omnibar to search only through your open tabs. Essential when you have 50 tabs open.
* Data Acquisition: yy copies the current page's URL, and yf copies the URL of any link hint. This keeps your clipboard clean for piping data elsewhere on your system.
If you cherish efficiency and hate GUI bloat, installing Vimium C is the final, essential step in migrating your workflow to a unified, keyboard-driven environment. Stop clicking, start navigating.
#nostr #vimiumc #vim #hyprland #archlinux #keyboardonly #privacy #efficiency