How do I convert a horizontal split into a vertical split or move a window to the far side of the screen?

Explanation

After opening a split you can dynamically reposition windows using <C-w>H, <C-w>J, <C-w>K, and <C-w>L. These move the current window to the far left, bottom, top, or right of the screen respectively, causing it to span the full screen width or height. This effectively converts a horizontal split into a vertical one (or vice versa) without closing and reopening buffers.

How it works

• <C-w>H — Move window to the far left (full-height vertical pane)
• <C-w>J — Move window to the very bottom (full-width horizontal pane)
• <C-w>K — Move window to the very top (full-width horizontal pane)
• <C-w>L — Move window to the far right (full-height vertical pane)

Note the uppercase letters: lowercase <C-w>h/j/k/l simply move the cursor between windows, while uppercase moves the window itself.

Example

You split horizontally with :split file.txt and now have two windows stacked:

┌─────────────┐
│   file.txt  │
├─────────────┤
│  current    │
└─────────────┘

Press <C-w>L (or <C-w>H) to rotate into a side-by-side vertical split:

┌──────┬──────┐
│ cur  │ file │
└──────┴──────┘

Tips

• Works with more than two windows: the moved window takes an entire edge, and remaining windows share the space left over.
• Combine with <C-w>= to equalize window sizes after repositioning.
• To move a window to a new tab entirely, use <C-w>T.