Why don't my arrow keys work in vim under iTerm?

Question

They work just fine if I use Terminal and start a vim session, but under iTerm I have to resort to using H-J-K-L to do left-up-down-right movement.

In both Terminal and iTerm TERM=xterm-color. My .vimrc is quite lean and there are no key bindings set in there that would causing this problem.

iTerm v0.10.

Answer 1

Try the following:

1. From the Bookmarks menu item, select Manage Bookmarks....
2. Choose the Default bookmark and click the edit icon.
3. Change the Keyboard setting to Global.

Answer 2

The following worked for me.

In iTerm2:

• Profiles -> Open Profiles...
• Edit Profiles...
• Keys tab
• From Load Preset... drop-down, pick Terminal.app compatibility

Answer 3

This is how I fixed:

nnoremap <silent> <ESC>^[A <Nop>
nnoremap <silent> <ESC>^[B <Nop>
nnoremap <silent> <ESC>^[D <Nop>
nnoremap <silent> <ESC>^[C <Nop>

Note:

The "^[" characters must not be typed, instead you get them by doing: ⌃-V and pressing the corresponding cursor arrow position (up,down,left,right).

Tested with: iTerm2 (Build 1.0.0.20140629)

Answer 4

I was able to get this sorted out with iTerm2 Build 3.0.15 and the following excerpt from my .vimrc:

" Map alternate key combination for Esc.
noremap <c-[> <Esc>
" Map arrow keys for nomal mode.
nnoremap <silent> <Esc><Up>A <Nop>
nnoremap <silent> <Esc><Down>B <Nop>
nnoremap <silent> <Esc><Right>C <Nop>
nnoremap <silent> <Esc><Left>D <Nop>

HTH.