How do I stop Vim from auto-equalizing split sizes when opening or closing windows?

Explanation

When you work with carefully sized splits, Vim's default behavior can feel disruptive: opening or closing a window triggers an automatic rebalance. Setting noequalalways disables that behavior so your layout stays exactly as you arranged it. This is especially useful when you keep a narrow diagnostics split, a wide code window, and a small reference pane during long editing sessions.

How it works

• equalalways is a global option that tells Vim to resize all windows after split open/close events.
• :set noequalalways turns that automatic rebalancing off.
• Your current window sizes are preserved unless you explicitly resize them.
• You can still rebalance on demand with <C-w>= when you actually want equal sizes.

Example

Suppose your layout is tuned like this:

| code (wide)                | logs (narrow) |
|                            |               |
|----------------------------|---------------|
| quickfix (short height)                    |

With default settings, closing logs may cause Vim to redistribute widths and heights automatically. After:

:set noequalalways

closing or opening a split no longer forces a rebalance, so the remaining windows keep your manual proportions until you change them.

Tips

• Use <C-w>= to equalize temporarily, then continue with noequalalways enabled.
• Pair with :set winminheight=0 and :set winminwidth=0 if you want tighter control over how small utility windows can shrink.
• If you only want this behavior in specific workflows, toggle it with quick mappings or project-local config.