How do I indent all lines from the cursor to the matching closing bracket in Vim?

Explanation

Vim's > operator (indent) works with any motion or text object — including %, which jumps to the bracket, parenthesis, or brace matching the one under the cursor. Combining them as >% indents every line from the current line to the matching closing delimiter, letting you re-indent entire code blocks without entering visual mode.

How it works

• > is the indent operator; it shifts lines right by one shiftwidth
• % moves to the matching bracket (works with (, ), {, }, [, ])
• When used as an operator+motion, >% operates on all lines between the cursor and the matched bracket, inclusive

Place the cursor on an opening bracket and press >% to indent everything inside (and including) the surrounding delimiters.

Example

With the cursor on { at the start of a function body:

function greet() {
if (x) {
return x;
}
}

After pressing >%:

function greet() {
    if (x) {
    return x;
    }
    }

The entire body is shifted right by one indent level.

Tips

• Use <% to un-indent from cursor to matching bracket
• Use =% to auto-indent the block according to your indentation rules (often more useful)
• Add a count for multiple indent levels: 2>% indents by two shiftwidths
• Works on any matchable delimiter, not just {}; useful with ( for long function argument lists
• The % motion is powered by matchpairs; see :help matchpairs to customize which brackets it matches