A VIM mode I did not know about for quite some time during my VIM usage is “paste” mode. This mode doesn’t do much, but is invaluable if you are moving code around, copy and pasting between files outside vim.

Paste mode can be activated using set :paste and deactivated with set :nopaste. This mode by default simply deactivates autoindentation, which means that the existing format of the text being pasted will be respected.

This is a very simple and handy trick to keep in mind, as it saves auto-indent picking up the wrong spacing and incorrectly applying “fixes” which often need to be manually fixed up.