yank-ring
yank-ring: every yank and delete kept in a bounded, recency-ordered history. `<C-r>{reg}` inserts a register, `<C-r><C-r>` picks from the ring, and the pick lands wherever you opened it from.
Vim gives you "" and twenty-six named registers, and the problem with both is that you have to decide before you copy. Yank three things without naming a register and the first two are gone.
The yank ring keeps them. Every yank and every delete pushes an entry; the ring holds the most recent yank.ring.size of them, newest first.
Using it
In Insert mode:
| Keys | Does |
|---|---|
<C-r> then a register char | Insert that register's contents — vim's insert-register. <C-r>" for the unnamed one, <C-r>+ for the system clipboard. |
<C-r><C-r> | Open the yank picker: the ring newest-first, then your named registers, filtered as you type. |
In any picker, <C-r> opens the yank picker over it and appends your pick to that picker's query — so you can filter :files by something you copied a minute ago instead of retyping it. <Esc> in the yank picker returns you to the list you were filtering rather than closing both.
:picker yank-ring opens the same list from anywhere.
The pick lands where you opened it from. That is the part worth knowing: open the picker while editing and the text is inserted at your cursor; open it from the : line and it goes into the command line; from a search or a prompt, into that. Opening it from inside another picker adds the text to that picker's query rather than replacing the picker.
Normal-mode <C-r> is still redo. Only Insert mode gains a meaning here, which is where vim puts it too.
Ring entries show their position and whether they are linewise or charwise, because the two paste differently and you are usually choosing between rows that look alike.
Still to come
"0–"9 do not read from the ring yet — they are still the old behaviour. Wiring them up so "0 is the newest yank and "1–"9 the nine newest deletes is a later slice.
Deletes go in too
This is the deliberate difference from the system clipboard, which takes yanks only.
The two stores have different blast radii. The clipboard is shared with every other application on your machine, so vim's unnamedplus wart — where an incidental x clobbers the URL you copied from your browser — destroys something the editor never owned. The ring is internal and bounded: an x landing in it costs one slot and destroys nothing.
And "get back the line I just deleted" is one of the most common reasons to go looking through history at all. A ring holding only yanks would decline the question you most want to ask it.
Duplicates
Two rules, and they are different on purpose:
- A consecutive repeat collapses. Holding
yy, or re-yanking an unchanged line, would otherwise fill the picker with identical rows it could not help you tell apart. - A non-consecutive repeat is promoted. Re-yanking something from an hour ago is a real event, and moving it to the top is the useful answer — it is what you are about to paste.
Kind counts as part of an entry's identity: the same text yanked linewise and charwise pastes differently, so both are kept.
Size
:set yank.ring.size=50 " the default
:set yank.ring.size=0 " disable the ring
Vim keeps 9, emacs 120. 50 is enough that the picker's filter is the tool you reach for rather than scrolling, and small enough that the whole ring stays cheap to hold.
The value is read when an entry is pushed, so lowering it takes effect on your next yank rather than at your next restart. Eviction is oldest-first.
"_ (the black hole) pushes nothing, as it does nowhere else.
See also
modal-editing— the named registers, which still work exactly as they did; the ring is addressed by recency rather than by name, and the two do not compete.