How do I make half-page scrolling move through wrapped lines instead of jumping over them in Neovim?

Explanation

By default, Neovim's half-page scroll commands (<C-d>, <C-u>, <C-f>, <C-b>) count movement by text lines, not screen rows. When long lines are wrapped, the cursor can jump abruptly past wrapped portions. The smoothscroll option (Neovim 0.9+) changes this so scrolling counts by visible screen rows, which feels much more natural.

How it works

With set smoothscroll enabled:

• <C-d> and <C-u> scroll by half the window height in screen rows, not text lines
• <C-f> and <C-b> scroll by one full window height in screen rows
• Wrapped portions of long lines are traversed smoothly rather than skipped

Add to your init.vim or init.lua:

set smoothscroll

vim.opt.smoothscroll = true

Example

With a 200-character line wrapped across 4 screen rows and scrolloff=5:

Without smoothscroll: <C-d> skips the entire wrapped line in one jump.
With smoothscroll: <C-d> steps through each screen row of the wrapped line, keeping context.

Tips

• Only available in Neovim 0.9.0 and later; use :help 'smoothscroll' to check
• Works best combined with set wrap and set linebreak for readable wrapped lines
• Does not affect <C-e> / <C-y> (line-at-a-time scrolling) — those always scroll one screen row
• Setting scrolloff to a moderate value (e.g., set scrolloff=5) combines well for comfortable reading