MacVim

MacVim is a graphical version of Vim for the macOS operating system. It provides a native macOS user interface by using the Cocoa framework, while the underlying text editing engine remains Vim. MacVim presents Vim in a macOS window with menus, scrollbars, and optional toolbars, offering the familiar editing experience of Vim with a Mac-friendly GUI.

MacVim builds on Vim's editing core and inherits its features, including modal editing, powerful search and replace, extensive syntax highlighting, and support for a large plugin ecosystem. The GUI adds macOS-specific conveniences such as native font rendering, system clipboard integration, and support for macOS keyboard shortcuts, menu items, and window management, including multiple windows and tabs.

Development and availability: MacVim is maintained as a separate project from Vim and is distributed as a standalone macOS application. It can be installed from prebuilt binaries or via package managers such as Homebrew. Like Vim, MacVim is free and open source, released under the Vim license.

Features and usage: MacVim supports high-contrast and retina displays, true color, and full-screen mode. Users configure behavior through their vimrc files and plugins, just as in Vim, gaining the same editing model in a GUI environment.

See also: Vim, GVim, Neovim.