When building iOS applications, you are most likely using Xcode. While Xcode is awesome, I miss the thrill of modal text editing I get when using my favorite text editor: Vim. Although Vim is available on OSX by default, it’s difficult to use for iOS development. Using XVim, it’s possible to get the best of both worlds by adding Vim keybindings and functionality to Xcode.

Preparing a certificate for code signing

Before moving on, make sure you have Xcode closed.

Starting with Xcode 8 Apple no longer loads third party plugins so we have to code-sign Xcode in order to do so. You can follow the steps on this page, or continue reading.

If you already have a certificate from Apple’s developer program, you can skip to the next section. Otherwise, do the following:

Open “Keychain Access” (in Applications -> Utilities) and select “login” in the left pane. Select Create a Certificate (in KeyChain Access -> Certificate Assistant) as seen in this screenshot:

Input your name you want to use and select “Code Signing” for Certificate Type. This name is used later in a terminal command, so use an easily distinguishable name here. In this example, we’re using XcodeSigner.

You now have a certificate for code signing.

Building XVim

Use your certificate by running the following command in the terminal: