How to Delete a Line (or Lines) in Vim and Neovim

How to Delete Multiple Lines in Vim (in One Go)

by Heinz Tschabitscher | Mar 14, 2026 | Useful Tech

Looking at a sea of text or code, dreading the thought of having to delete unwanted lines one by one? Relax: Vim lets you mass-delete in style. Find out here how to delete a line (or multiple lines in one go) with Vim and Neovim ⤓.

How to Delete a Line Fast in Vim or Neovim

To delete a single line fast in Vim, Neovim and Vim-modes in other editing environments:

  1. Position the text cursor in the line you want to delete.
    Here’s how: You can use the motion keys J (down) and K (up) in normal mode (exit insert mode first).
    Less repetition: Especially with line numbers visible, press : for command mode, enter the line number and press Enter.
    Anywhere: Any spot on the line is fine; you do not need to concern yourself with the horizontal position at all.
  2. Press D D (D two times).
    Delete line contents: Press Shift D to delete from the current cursor position until the end of the line.
    Repetition: You can repeat this command to delete more than one line at a time, of course; see below.

How to Delete Multiple Lines in One Go in Vim or Neovim

Visual Mode: What You See Is What You Delete

Time needed: 1 minute

To delete multiple lines in Vim (or Neovim or, typically, another editor in a Vim-like mode) using visual mode to highlight the unwanted lines:

  1. Position the cursor in the first or last line you want to delete.

    Normal mode: Do exit insert mode in Vim and make sure you are in normal mode.
    Anywhere: it does not matter where on the line the cursor is positioned.
    Vim movement: Use J, most basically, to move the cursor down and K to move it up.
    Go to line: To go to a line, press : (colon), enter the desire line (:15, for example) number and press Enter.

  2. Press Shift V to switch to visual line mode

  3. Use the motion keys to expand (or contract) the line-mode selection.

    Search: You can press / (dash) to search for a string and expand the selection to the search target; end searching with Enter.

  4. Press D to delete

    Undo: Press U to undo if you deleted something you did not want to delete.
    Without visual highlight: See below for deleting a line or multiple lines even faster in normal mode.
    Their word: Vim.org include information on visual mode in Vim help.
    Press ‘D’ now to delete the highlighted lines in Vim using visual line mode

One command to cut the lot?

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Vim Normal Mode: Delete Multiple Lines Fast

To delete a line or multiple lines of text fast in Vim in normal mode:

  • Press D D to delete the current line; see above.
  • Press <number of lines> D D to delete the next <number of lines> lines.
    Example: Press 3 D D to delete the current and the next 2 lines.
    Shift: Here, the alternative <number of lines> Shift D deletes from the current cursor position until the end of the line plus the following <𝑛𝑣𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑠>-1 lines.
    Line numbers: You can have Vim show you line numbers (intermittently or by default), of course.

Vim Command Mode: Delete Specific Lines

To delete lines by number in Vim:

  1. Press : in normal mode to enter command mode.
  2. Type the range of line numbers to delete separated by a comma.
    It’s also relative: Use -<line count> and +<line count> for lines relative to the line the cursor is on currently.
    First line: The first line is both 0 and 1.
    Last line: You can use $ for the last line.

(Tested with Vim 9.1 and Neovim 0.9.5–0.11.6; first published April 2024, last updated March 2026)

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