How do I save and restore a window's folds, cursor position, and local options?

Explanation

:mkview saves the current window's view state — including manual folds, cursor position, scroll position, and local option settings — to a file. :loadview restores it. This lets you close Vim and come back later with your folds and cursor exactly where you left them.

How it works

• :mkview — save the current view (folds, cursor, scroll, local options) to a file in &viewdir
• :loadview — restore the most recently saved view for this file
• :mkview {N} — save to view slot N (1–9), allowing multiple saved views per file
• :loadview {N} — restore from slot N
• Views are stored in ~/.vim/view/ by default (controlled by viewdir option)

What gets saved

Controlled by the viewoptions option (:set viewoptions?):

• Manual folds and fold state (open/closed)
• Cursor position and scroll offset
• Local options and mappings (setlocal values)
• NOT saved by default: window size, tab layout (those are for :mksession)

Automatic save/restore

Add to your ~/.vimrc to auto-save/load views:

autocmd BufWinLeave *.* mkview
autocmd BufWinEnter *.* silent! loadview

Now every file automatically remembers its folds and cursor.

Tips

• Use :mksession instead if you want to save the entire Vim session (all windows, tabs, buffers)
• Clean up stale view files occasionally: rm -rf ~/.vim/view/*
• viewoptions controls what's included — remove options from it if you only want folds: :set viewoptions=folds,cursor
• Views are file-specific (keyed by full path), so they work across Vim restarts