How to Select All in Vim: Copy, Delete, or Yank Every Line

Sooner or later you will need to grab the entire contents of a file open in Vim, whether to paste a config file into a support ticket, move a script into another editor, or wipe everything and start over. In most editors that is Ctrl+A followed by Ctrl+C. Vim does not work that way, and pressing Ctrl+A increments the next number at or after the cursor instead of selecting text.

The quickest way to select all text in Vim is the ggVG command sequence in normal mode. This guide explains how it works and how to copy, delete, or run other commands on every line in the file, including copying the whole file to the system clipboard.

Selecting All Text with ggVG #

To select all text in Vim, make sure you are in normal mode (press Esc if you are not), then type ggVG. The sequence is three separate commands executed one after another:

• gg – Move the cursor to the first line of the file
• V – Start line-wise visual mode
• G – Jump to the last line, extending the selection over the whole file

Every line in the file is now highlighted. From here, Vim waits for an operator: press y to yank (copy) the selection, d to delete it, or any other visual mode command. To cancel the selection without doing anything, press Esc.

Copying (Yanking) All Lines #

With the whole file selected, press y to yank it into Vim’s default register. The full sequence is ggVGy. You can then paste the text elsewhere in the same Vim session with p.

Visual mode is not required, though. If you already know you want to copy everything, the ex command :%y does the same thing without touching the selection:

:%y

The % range means “all lines”, so :%y yanks the entire file into the default register in one step. The normal mode equivalent is ggyG, which yanks from the first line to the last without entering visual mode.

To duplicate the whole file below itself, run :%y followed by G and p: yank all lines, jump to the end, and paste.

Copying All Lines to the System Clipboard #

Yanked text normally stays inside Vim. To paste the file into a browser, email, or another application, copy it to the system clipboard using the "+ register:

• ggVG"+y – Select all, then yank the selection to the system clipboard
• gg"+yG – Yank all lines to the system clipboard without visual mode
• :%y+ – Yank all lines to the system clipboard with an ex command

After any of these, paste into the other application with the regular paste shortcut for your desktop environment.

If installing another Vim build is not an option, you can pipe the buffer to a clipboard utility instead. On X11 systems with xclip installed:

:%w !xclip -selection clipboard

This writes the whole buffer to the xclip command, which places it on the clipboard. On Wayland, use wl-copy from the wl-clipboard package the same way:

:%w !wl-copy

For more on registers and clipboard integration, see How to Copy, Cut and Paste in Vim
.

Deleting All Lines #

To select everything and delete it, use ggVGd, or skip visual mode with ggdG (move to the first line, then delete to the last line). The fastest option is again the ex command with the % range:

:%d

All lines are removed and the file is left with a single empty line. The deleted text lands in the default register, so an accidental :%d is easy to reverse: press u to undo
, or paste the text back with p.

To delete every line without replacing the current contents of the unnamed register, send the deleted text to the black hole register:

:%d _

This preserves whatever was already available for pasting with p.

For ranges, patterns, and more deletion commands, see How to Delete Lines in Vim
.

Running Other Commands on the Whole File #

Selecting all text is not limited to copy and delete. With ggVG active, any visual mode operator applies to the entire file:

• ggVG= – Re-indent every line (same as gg=G)
• ggVGu – Convert the whole file to lowercase
• ggVGU – Convert the whole file to uppercase
• ggVG> – Shift every line one indent level to the right

For find and replace across the whole file, you do not need a selection at all: the substitute command takes the same % range, as in :%s/old/new/g. See Vim Find and Replace
for the full syntax.

Quick Reference #

For a printable quick reference, see the Vim cheatsheet
.

Conclusion #

Use ggVG when you want to see the whole-file selection before choosing an operator. When the action is already clear, the % range is shorter, as in :%y, :%d, or :%s/old/new/g.