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Learn more about Teams Confirming Lubuntu 21.10 follows the convention in the @ckjbgames comment ( /usr/share/vim/vimrc without the period). However, this file contains the following comment: Vim will load $VIMRUNTIME/defaults.vim if the user does not have a vimrc. This happens after /etc/vim/vimrc(.local) are loaded, so it will override any settings in these files. – Greg M. Krsak Feb 14, 2022 at 23:23 My ArchLinux (firmware version: linux-6.1.3.arch1-1) has vimrc at location: /etc/vimrc, you can use ':scriptnames' command in any vim session to display the files that vim has loaded which obviously displays "vimrc"\'s location usually at the very top. – Syed M Abbas Haider Taqvi Jan 6 at 10:22

You need to create it. In most installations I've used it hasn't been created by default.

You usually create it as ~/.vimrc .

@Nateshbhat: should I keep using /etc/vim/vimrc or copy that to ~/.vimrc ? Or can I have both? – Mohammad Faisal Jul 23, 2019 at 17:26 If you want to customize it, I'd copy it local first. Otherwise you are changing settings for all users. – AlG Jul 26, 2019 at 10:29 You should be aware that if you create this file, it will ignore all settings in the system vimrc file. (For example /etc/vim/vimrc .) This confused me no end after I created a .vimrc , didn't populate it completely with all my usual options (because it was on a server that I didn't intend to do much work on) and it left my vim in a broken or nonfunctional state. – FreelanceConsultant Jun 27, 2020 at 13:06 Hey!. I am using VIM extension in VSCode . Is there any way to change the keybindings of the extension? – Jdeep Jul 21, 2020 at 8:29

These methods work, if you already have a .vimrc file:

:scriptnames list all the .vim files that Vim loaded for you, including your .vimrc file.

:e $MYVIMRC open & edit the current .vimrc that you are using, then use Ctrl + G to view the path in status bar.

@MorganWilde Not necessarily, :scriptnames and :e $MYVIMRC both return blank outputs for me. – tim-phillips Jan 28, 2014 at 6:11 +1 for :scriptnames . However $MYVIMRC isn't guaranteed to be set, for example when starting vim with vim -u filename . – 1983 Sep 7, 2014 at 23:26 :scriptnames has vimrc but not .vimrc, are they the same? I find them located in my usr/share folder, would adding ~/.vimrc (as accepted answer) even do anything then without further configuration? Is that a way to add user specific options to the vimrc perhaps? – Tyler Nov 1, 2014 at 15:33 Note that :e $MYVIMRC only works when there is a vimrc file in the first place. Otherwise this will start edting a file literally called $MYVIMRC . – Tomalak Mar 12, 2016 at 8:28 @Shadoninja - that wasn't "yours", that is the global rc file. Whatever you define in your .vimrc file (in most cases in your home directory) will override the defaults in /etc/vimrc . – user5683823 Apr 6, 2018 at 18:19

To create your vimrc, start up Vim and do one of the following:

:e $HOME/.vimrc  " on Unix, Mac or OS/2
:e $HOME/_vimrc  " on Windows
:e s:.vimrc      " on Amiga
Insert the settings you want, and save the file.
Note that exisitence of this file will disable the compatible option. See below for details.
Long answer:
There are two kinds of vimrc:
the user vimrc in $HOME
the system vimrc in $VIM (on Amiga systems, s:.vimrc is considered a user vimrc)
The user vimrc file often does not exist until created by the user. If you cannot find $HOME/.vimrc (or $HOME/_vimrc on Windows) then you can, and probably should, just create it.
The system vimrc should normally be left unmodified and is located in the $VIM* directory. The system vimrc is not a good place you keep your personal settings. If you modify this file your changes may be overwritten if you ever upgrade Vim. Also, changes here will affect other users on a multi-user system. In most cases, settings in the user vimrc will override settings in the system vimrc.
From :help vimrc:
  
A file that contains initialization commands is called a "vimrc" file.
  Each line in a vimrc file is executed as an Ex command line.  It is
  sometimes also referred to as "exrc" file.  They are the same type of
  file, but "exrc" is what Vi always used, "vimrc" is a Vim specific
  name.  Also see |vimrc-intro|.
  
Places for your personal initializations:
    Unix            $HOME/.vimrc or $HOME/.vim/vimrc
    OS/2            $HOME/.vimrc, $HOME/vimfiles/vimrc
                    or $VIM/.vimrc (or _vimrc)
    MS-Windows      $HOME/_vimrc, $HOME/vimfiles/vimrc
                    or $VIM/_vimrc
    Amiga           s:.vimrc, home:.vimrc, home:vimfiles:vimrc
                    or $VIM/.vimrc
  
The files are searched in the order specified above and only the first
  one that is found is read.
(MacOS counts as Unix for the above.)
Note that the mere existence of a user vimrc will change Vim's behavior by turning off the compatible option. From :help compatible-default:
  
When Vim starts, the 'compatible' option is on.  This will be used when Vim
  starts its initializations.  But as soon as a user vimrc file is found, or a
  vimrc file in the current directory, or the "VIMINIT" environment variable is
  set, it will be set to 'nocompatible'.  This has the side effect of setting or
  resetting other options (see 'compatible').  But only the options that have
  not been set or reset will be changed.
                That is the system vimrc. It's better to edit $HOME/.vimrc, and to create it if it doesn't already exist.
– Laurence Gonsalves
                Nov 30, 2015 at 18:58
                If .vimrc file is not created in home directory then vi references /usr/share/vim/.vimrc file for use.
– Sandeep
                Jun 2, 2016 at 11:28
                @Idigas I was typing :echo(xxx) on my command window but I realized now you meant to type this into the vim editor. However, even though :e xxx works, the :echo(xxx) doesn't. It says E121 Undefined Variable: xxx    E15: Invalid Expression : ($xxx)
– Yannis Dran
                Jan 30, 2014 at 20:00
                @YannisDran - Just to be clear, you got that error upon typing :echo($myvimrc) into the vim command line? Not :echo(myvimrc) by any chance?
– Rook
                Jan 30, 2014 at 22:32
                I use the $ and I did it into the vi editor(Typing : enables command line). Btw, now vim responds nothing, it only puts the indicator at the first line of vim. (Vim-Vi Improved v.7.3 on OSX)
– Yannis Dran
                Jan 30, 2014 at 22:49
on unix vim --version tells you the various locations of the vim config files :
   system vimrc file: "$VIM/vimrc"
     user vimrc file: "$HOME/.vimrc"
 2nd user vimrc file: "~/.vim/vimrc"
      user exrc file: "$HOME/.exrc"
       defaults file: "$VIMRUNTIME/defaults.vim"
  fall-back for $VIM: "/usr/share/vim"
                Can verify that this works with the VIM that bundles with Git for Windows.  (Noting this only because so much that an SO answer might presume that DOESN'T work in Git Bash.)
– Janet
                Jul 2, 2019 at 13:00
                I prefer this answer, since it will always provide updated and authentic information regarding the valid vimrc file paths for a given system and vim installation.
– Semnodime
                Jan 30 at 18:15
For whatever reason, these answers didn't quite work for me. This is what worked for me instead:
In Vim, the :version command gives you the paths of system and user vimrc and gvimrc files (among other things), and the output looks something like this:
 system vimrc file: "$VIM/vimrc"
   user vimrc file: "$HOME/.vimrc"
    user exrc file: "$HOME/.exrc"
system gvimrc file: "$VIM/gvimrc"
  user gvimrc file: "$HOME/.gvimrc"
The one you want is user vimrc file: "$HOME/.vimrc"
So to edit the file: vim $HOME/.vimrc
Source: Open vimrc file
                I don't understand how the existing answers didn't quite work for you when in fact the solution you proposed is already covered by them. This answer mentions $HOME/.vimrc and the top answer mentions ~/.vimrc which is the same as $HOME/.vimrc.
– doubleDown
                Sep 5, 2017 at 9:30
                This tells you the directory your system vimrc is located in, but it doesn't tell you where your user vimrc should go, or what its name should be.
– Laurence Gonsalves
                Feb 4, 2020 at 22:51
                Well, the question "where" is the vimrc file.  Where user vimrc should go? Put it into ~/.vimrc or ~/.vim/vimrc, notice that latter don't have dot in front of it.
– user4640261
                Feb 5, 2020 at 1:24
Useful Information can be obtained using the find command
find / -iname "*vimrc*" -type f 2>/dev/null
There are many answers already, but it can sometimes be useful to simply run a "find" for anything containing the name "vimrc".
The reason is that this will show you what files you actualy have available on the system currently, rather than what you might put on your system. (The information for which you would obtain from :version as explained in other answers.)
Example result on my system
On my system this produces
/usr/share/vim/vim82/vimrc_example.vim
/usr/share/vim/vim82/gvimrc_example.vim
/etc/vim/gvimrc
/etc/vim/vimrc
/etc/vim/vimrc.tiny
Which is quite useful because it tells us that there are 2 example files installed in the share directorys for both gvim and vim, and that there are also some system-wide config files below /etc/.
On my system, I also have a file at ~/.vimrc but this does not appear in this list because it is a link to another file, stored under ~/Linux-Config. But you won't have this directory, it's specific to machines I use on my own network.
Detailed Explanation of find syntax used
Explanation:
find starting at the root directory / (find works recursively)
anything containing the case insensitive regex *vimrc* which means any name with vimrc (case insensitive) in it somewhere, can be preceeded or followed by anything or nothing (*)
type = files (not directory/symlink etc)
throw all errors to /dev/null otherwise the output is spammed with unreadable errors from /proc
                if the * acts like a regular glob, you should do instead: find / \( -iname "*vimrc*" -o -iname ".*vimrc*" \) -type f 2>/dev/null , otherwise you'll miss the filenames starting with a . (such as ~/.vimrc , etc) as in a regular shell glob, *filename doesn't grab files starting with a . (as those are "lightly hidden" this naming scheme in most unix/linux commands (compare ls -l and ls -al, and echo * will show only those who don't start with a .) , and thus a regular * glob is not including those by default)
– Olivier Dulac
                Jan 31, 2022 at 14:40
In Arch Linux the global one is at /etc/vimrc. There are some comments in there with helpful details.
Since the filename starts with a ., it's hidden unless you use ls -a to show ALL files.
Typing :version while in Vim will show you a bunch of interesting information including the file location.
If you're not sure what ~/.vimrc means look at this question.
Where is the .vimrc file?  It depends on the OS.  As you can see, you were looking for /home/$user/.vimrc, which probably means you are using BSD / Linux.  Here are the locations for each OS...
BSD / Linux : /home/$user/.vimrc
SunOS / Solaris : /export/home/$user/.vimrc
MacOS : /Users/$user/.vimrc
Android : /data/media/$userid/.vimrc
Unix : $root/home/$user/.vimrc
AT&T Unix : $root/usr/$user/.vimrc
Unix-Derived :
/var/users/$user/.vimrc
/u01/$user/.vimrc
/usr/$user/.vimrc
/user/$user/.vimrc
/users/$user/.vimrc (Source: Wikipedia: Default home directory per operating system.)
If it doesn't exist, create it with ~/.vimrc.
In addition, the root user has their own special .vimrc file, which can be found in /root/.vimrc on BSD / Linux (and in equivalent locations for the other OS's).
The location is set in the $HOME variable, which is always set in Linux environments. (Source: StackExchange->Unix & Linux.)
In a terminal, type cd. This will help you go to the home folder.
In the terminal, type vi .vimrc. This will create an empty vimrc system file which you want to use.
In the file, type set number, and then hit Esc on the keyboard and type in :wq. This will set the line number shown in the default setting file vimrc and save it.
vi something to see if this works. If not, try to restart the terminal completely.
If in a terminal, type in cd /usr/share/vim/, go to that folder, and type in ls. You can directly see a file named vimrc. But it's a system file that says read only. I feel it's not a good idea to try modify it. So following the above steps to create a vimrc by yourself is better. It worked for me.
                One thing I needed to change to the above for my CentOS7 install : after step 1, type "cd username".
– HoldOffHunger
                Jul 31, 2017 at 14:03
when you edit something in there the changes will effect all users 

if you don't want that you can create a local vimrc in
~/.vimrc
the changes here will only effect the one user
I tried everything in the previous answer and couldn't find a .vimrc file, so I had to make one.
I copied the example file, cp vimrc_example.vim ~/.vimrc.
I had to create the file, copying from /usr/share/vim/vim74/vimrc_example.vim to ~/.vimrc. Those were the instructions in the vimrc_example file.
My solution is for Unix for other operating systems. According to the Vim documentation, your destination path should be as follows:
    For Unix and OS/2   : ~/.vimrc
    For Amiga           : s:.vimrc
    For MS-DOS and Win32: $VIM\_vimrc
    For OpenVMS         : sys$login:.vimrc
The vimrc file in Ubuntu (12.04 (Precise Pangolin)): I tried :scriptnames in Vim, and it shows both /usr/share/vim/vimrc and ~/.vimrc.
But I had manually created ~/.vimrc.
In SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) and openSUSE the global one is located at /etc/vimrc.
To edit it, simply do vi /etc/vimrc.
Unfortunately, there are so many answers and none of them helped me.
Until I ran
:checkhealth
in vim and found out that in my case, the vim config file should be named init.vim (under ~/.config/nvim/init.vim).
                This would be because you're using Neovim, which defaults to using the (preferred) $XDG_CONFIG_HOME directory for app configuration. This helps to de-clutter the $HOME directory. There's been an RFC out on Vim for a few years now to move to the same convention, though not much has come of it:  github.com/vim/vim/issues/2034
– JustALawnGnome7
                Dec 21, 2022 at 3:55
I was attempting to edit my .vimrc file and this worked for me (macOS Ventura 13.0.1 December 2022).
touch ~/.vimrc
vim ~/.vimrc
I was then able to edit the file to my heart's content, and the next time I ran vim it picked up my changes.
                Your answer could be improved with additional supporting information. Please edit to add further details, such as citations or documentation, so that others can confirm that your answer is correct. You can find more information on how to write good answers in the help center.
– Community
                Oct 21, 2021 at 13:21
        
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