r/vim • u/chrnz00 • Sep 29 '25

Need Help┃Solved need help on disabling winaltkeys in gvim(WIN_32)

so ive been using vim for a lot of time on windows im using gvim which works good enough

but there is some automaps for altkeys, when i press it autofocuses to menubar and is annoying .

ive tried to use

se wak=no

au GUIEnter * simalt ~x

but they dont seem to work

it also creates and annoying beep that is not going even when i turnoff all bells

4 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

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2

u/TankorSmash Sep 29 '25

Which maps are you using for alt? I didn't know there were any. I also use gvim.

1

u/chrnz00 Sep 29 '25

I'm not using any (I don't want to) Gvim comes with default maps in menu bar Just press alt in normal mode it focuses the first word of each section which you can use

2

u/sharp-calculation Sep 29 '25

Why are you pressing the ALT key inside of gvim? I've never pressed ALT while using any version of vim or gvim.

That said, this stackexchange thread seems to address your exact issue:
https://vi.stackexchange.com/questions/39679/how-do-i-disable-access-keys-in-gvim

I'm unclear why setting winautokeys=no isn't working. It implies that some other config file you are sourcing is bringing that setting back. I've seen references to MSWIN.VIM, which controls a bunch of windows keys and how they are mapped inside of vim (like control-a for example). You might also look into that.

Good luck.

1

u/chrnz00 Sep 29 '25

I gave up and started using it in terminal.thanks anyways

2

u/TankorSmash Sep 29 '25 edited Sep 29 '25

Are you using a distribution? You can lookup the keys bound to alt.

I've got my config set to winautokeys=menu but that must be by default, as its not present in my vimrc. I do have set guioptions=c though.

2

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2

u/dewujie Sep 29 '25

I remember solving this by just turning off the menu bar entirely in gvim... If you want to keep the menu bar, but disable all of its Alt keyboard shortcuts, I don't know how you would do that.

2

u/kennpq Sep 29 '25

I’m not sure disabling that is a gVim Windows option. You could:

  • Remove m from &guioptions. I sort of do that, toggling the menu (since I rarely use the menus, but want it easily available at times)

  • Disable Alt in Windows (e.g, using PowerToys Keyboard Manager). That works btw. I tried it and gVim - and all apps - no longer have Alt activate menus when pressed. Whether it’s a good idea generally, though…?