Using snippets

Coc has snippets support in different ways:

• Snippet completion items from different vim snippet plugins, by using extension like: coc-ultisnips and coc-neosnippet.
• Snippet kind of completion item from language servers, which are snipmate format.
• Snippets from coc.nvim extensions that contribute VSCode snippets (requires coc-snippets).

Snippet completion

Complete item of snippet kind would be shown with ~ appended in label by default:

Note: when snippet format of complete item is set on completion resolve, you won't see ~, it's limitation of vim.

The snippet is designed to expand only when the completionDone is triggered by using <C-y> for confirm, so that user could decide expand the snippet or not.

To make <cr> for confirm completion, add

inoremap <silent><expr> <cr> pumvisible() ? coc#_select_confirm() : 
                                           \"\<C-g>u\<CR>\<c-r>=coc#on_enter()\<CR>"

to your vimrc.

• coc#_select_confirm() helps select first completion item when necessary and send <C-y> to vim for confirm completion.
• \<C-g>u used for break undo chain at current position.
• coc#on_enter() notify coc that you have pressed <enter>, so it can format your code on <enter>.

Note: some plugins are known to overwrite your <CR> mappings, so your custom keymap won't work, checkout your <CR> mapping by :verbose imap <CR>.

A snippet session would cancel under the following conditions:

• InsertEnter triggered outside snippet.
• Content change at final placeholder.
• Content added after snippet.
• Content changed in a snippet but not happens to a placeholder.

You can nest snippets in an active snippet session, just like VSCode.

If you don't want to expand snippet on completion, just use <C-n> to insert the extracted text without confirm completion, or checkout options of your language server to disable snippet complete items.

Configure snippets workflow

To navigate forward/backward of a snippet placeholder, use <C-j> and <C-k>. Vim global variable g:coc_snippet_next and g:coc_snippet_prev can be used to change the key-mapping.

If you don't like ~ as snippet indicator of complete item in completion menu, you can change that by using suggest.snippetIndicator in your coc-settings.json.

To make snippet completion work just like VSCode, you need to install coc-snippets then configure your <tab> in vim like:

inoremap <silent><expr> <TAB>
      \ pumvisible() ? coc#_select_confirm() :
      \ coc#expandableOrJumpable() ? "\<C-r>=coc#rpc#request('doKeymap', ['snippets-expand-jump',''])\<CR>" :
      \ <SID>check_back_space() ? "\<TAB>" :
      \ coc#refresh()

function! s:check_back_space() abort
  let col = col('.') - 1
  return !col || getline('.')[col - 1]  =~# '\s'
endfunction

let g:coc_snippet_next = '<tab>'

And add:

  // make vim select first item on completion
  "suggest.noselect": false

to your coc-settings.json.

Others configurations:

• coc.preferences.snippetStatusText: Text shown in 'statusline' to indicate snippet session is activate.
• coc.preferences.snippetHighlight: When true, use highlight group 'CocSnippetVisual' to highlight placeholders with same index of current one.

Using VSCode snippet from extensions

To load VSCode snippets, you need install coc-snippets extension.

Then install a VSCode snippet extension from GitHub with a command like:

:CocInstall https://github.com/andys8/vscode-jest-snippets

Open a file with a snippet related filetype, like foo.js as javascript and type part of the prefix characters.

Tip VSCode snippets extension can also be installed by using vim-plug