LazyVim/Tutorial/Navigate Man Pages by Heading

• Tutorial: Navigate man/pages by Heading in LazyVim

  • What You'll Create

    • We will open tmux(1) inside nvim, turn its structure into a navigable outline, jump among headings, and follow references to other manual pages.

  • Prerequisites

    • LazyVim with its current nvim/Plugin/snacks.nvim/Picker configuration.
    • The man and tmux commands installed. Running man tmux in a shell should display the manual page.

  • Learning Goals

    • Open an installed manual page from LazyVim's picker.
    • Browse a man page by heading with Neovim's gO outline.
    • Follow references between manual pages and return to the previous page.

  • Steps

    • 1. Open the Man Pages picker

      • In Normal mode, press <leader>sM — usually Space, s, then uppercase M. This is LazyVim/Keyshort/Open the Man Pages Picker.
      • Type tmux into the picker.
      • Select tmux(1) and press Enter.
      • You will see the formatted TMUX(1) manual in a Neovim buffer. Notice that ordinary motions, search, marks, and jump-list commands work here.

    • 2. Open the heading outline

      • Press gO (Key/G + Key/Shift + Key/O) This is nvim/Keyshort/Outline/Show the Buffer Outline.
      • A location-list window titled Table of contents opens. For tmux(1), it includes top-level headings such as NAME, SYNOPSIS, DESCRIPTION, COMMANDS, and OPTIONS, plus many indented commands and options.
      • Move with j and k, select COMMANDS, and press Enter. The man-page window jumps to that heading.

    • 3. Search and revisit the outline

      • Press gO again to bring the existing outline back into focus.
      • Type /new-session and press Enter to find that command in the outline, then press Enter again to jump to its documentation.
      • Run :lclose when you want to close the outline and keep the man page open. If focus is in the man page, gO reopens the same outline.

    • 4. Follow a reference to another man page

      • Move the cursor onto a reference ending in a manual section, such as printf(3) or pty(4).
      • Press K or Ctrl-] to open the referenced manual page.
      • Press Ctrl-T to return to tmux(1). This uses Neovim's tag stack, so the return works like following a help tag.

    • 5. Open a known page directly

      • Run :Man tmux when you already know the page name and want to skip the picker.
      • A section number disambiguates pages with the same name: :Man 1 printf opens section 1, while :Man 3 printf opens the C library function.
      • From a shell, nvim +'Man tmux' opens the same Neovim man-page buffer directly.

    • 6. Close the manual

      • Press q in the man-page buffer to close it when another editor window remains. Run :q to exit Neovim when the manual is the only window.

  • What You've Learned

    • <leader>sM searches the installed manual-page index; it chooses which page to open.
    • gO turns the current man page into a navigable location-list outline; it handles the headings inside that page.
    • K or Ctrl-] follows a manual-page reference, and Ctrl-T returns through the tag stack.