How do I temporarily zoom a split window to full screen and then restore the layout?

Explanation

Vim lets you temporarily maximize a split window to full width or full height, and then restore all windows to equal sizes with <C-w>=. This gives you a quick zoom-in/zoom-out workflow without closing any splits or rearranging your layout.

How it works

• <C-w>_ maximizes the current window's height (it takes up all available vertical space)
• <C-w>| maximizes the current window's width (it takes up all available horizontal space)
• Using both together (<C-w>_ <C-w>| or <C-w>|<C-w>_) effectively "zooms" the window to fill the entire screen
• <C-w>= equalizes all window sizes, restoring the balanced layout

The other splits are not closed — they shrink to a single line or column and remain accessible.

Example

You have three vertical splits open:

┌──────┬──────┬──────┐
│      │      │      │
│ a.js │ b.js │ c.js │
│      │      │      │
└──────┴──────┴──────┘

With the cursor in b.js, press <C-w>| to zoom it horizontally:

┌┬────────────────┬┐
││                 ││
││     b.js        ││
││                 ││
└┴────────────────┴┘

The other windows collapse to a single column each. Press <C-w>= to restore:

┌──────┬──────┬──────┐
│      │      │      │
│ a.js │ b.js │ c.js │
│      │      │      │
└──────┴──────┴──────┘

Tips

• Map a toggle zoom for convenience in your vimrc:

nnoremap <leader>z <C-w>_<C-w>\|
nnoremap <leader>Z <C-w>=

• Use a count with these commands: 10<C-w>_ sets the window height to exactly 10 lines, 80<C-w>| sets the width to 80 columns
• <C-w>o (or :only) closes all other windows entirely — use this only when you truly want to dismiss the other splits, not just hide them temporarily
• <C-w>T moves the current window to a new tab if you want a full-screen view that coexists with your split layout in another tab
• The collapsed windows still show their status lines, so you can see which files are in each position
• Combine with <C-w>w or <C-w>h/j/k/l to navigate to the collapsed windows when needed — they expand as soon as you start editing in them (if equalalways is set)