FAQ

:bd[elete] makes the tree spans the whole window. How do I prevent it?

Besides deleting the buffer, the vim's :bd[delete] commands also closes any window containing that buffer as long as this closing leaves at least one window. As a result, if there is a Neo-tree window alongside the primary one, :bd-ing this buffer also closes this main window and makes the Neo-tree window spans the whole screen.

This could sometimes be an unwanted behavior, especially when close_if_last_window = true, which means that :bd could quit neovim completely. However, as this is the intended behavior of :bd, we do not consider this a bug and do not plan to fix this. For users that want to prevent this behavior, there are several ways to do this:

No extra plugins

A common workaround to the default :bd is to use :bp | bd # instead. This first switches from the current buffer (let us call it A) to another buffer (we call it B), and then delete A. A is no longer in the current window, so the current window is not deleted.

Using plugins

There are a several options to choose from, among those are:

• The vim-bbye plugin introduces :Bdelete that is analogous to :bp | bd#, but with additional handlers for edge cases.
• vim-sayonara is a similar plugin to vim-bbye
• mini.bufremove is a lua alternative to the above 2 plugins.