What happened?
I was testing to see what CTRL-X would do and thought it would "open external editor" but instead It opened this view (See below) and I was stuck here, unable to exit had to restart the termianl.
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"/var/folders/2p/ykp5jf1n49v58wtw3gr4q06r0000gn/T/gemini-edit-DDUCZc/buffer.txt" 0L, 0B
What did you expect to happen?
Not this... I was very confused (in retrospect I should have realized it was VIM), but first I had Gemini CLI give me an analysis
✦ The Ctrl+X shortcut in Gemini CLI opens the current prompt in an external editor.
The specific editor used is determined by the following precedence:
general.preferredEditor setting: If you have configured this in your settings (e.g., via
/settings).
VISUAL environment variable: If the setting is not found.
EDITOR environment variable: If VISUAL is not set.
4. Default: vi on macOS/Linux (or notepad on Windows).
Supported values for preferredEditor include:
- GUI Editors: vscode, vscodium, windsurf, cursor, zed, antigravity
- Terminal Editors: vim, neovim, emacs, hx (Helix)
This made me realize this must be VIM, so I tried to open it normally without CLI doing so for me. The experience was much better as it showed me this:
~ VIM - Vi IMproved
~
~ version 9.1.1752
~ by Bram Moolenaar et al.
~ Vim is open source and freely distributable
~
~ Help poor children in Uganda!
~ type :help iccf for information
~
~ type :q to exit
~ type :help or for on-line help
~ type :help version9 for version info
I think we need to rethink the default editor experience given how many people (including me) never normally use VIM and going in there and as we know exiting VIM is very confusing.
Client information
N/A (this isn't version speciifc)
Login information
No response
Anything else we need to know?
No response
What happened?
I was testing to see what CTRL-X would do and thought it would "open external editor" but instead It opened this view (See below) and I was stuck here, unable to exit had to restart the termianl.
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
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~
"/var/folders/2p/ykp5jf1n49v58wtw3gr4q06r0000gn/T/gemini-edit-DDUCZc/buffer.txt" 0L, 0B
What did you expect to happen?
Not this... I was very confused (in retrospect I should have realized it was VIM), but first I had Gemini CLI give me an analysis
✦ The Ctrl+X shortcut in Gemini CLI opens the current prompt in an external editor.
The specific editor used is determined by the following precedence:
general.preferredEditorsetting: If you have configured this in your settings (e.g., via/settings).
VISUALenvironment variable: If the setting is not found.EDITORenvironment variable: If VISUAL is not set.4. Default: vi on macOS/Linux (or notepad on Windows).
Supported values for preferredEditor include:
This made me realize this must be VIM, so I tried to open it normally without CLI doing so for me. The experience was much better as it showed me this:
~ VIM - Vi IMproved
~
~ version 9.1.1752
~ by Bram Moolenaar et al.
~ Vim is open source and freely distributable
~
~ Help poor children in Uganda!
~ type :help iccf for information
~
~ type :q to exit
~ type :help or for on-line help
~ type :help version9 for version info
I think we need to rethink the default editor experience given how many people (including me) never normally use VIM and going in there and as we know exiting VIM is very confusing.
Client information
N/A (this isn't version speciifc)
Login information
No response
Anything else we need to know?
No response