Installing Neovim

I will show some install methods you can try to get Neovim's latest stable version, v0.12. Released on March 29, 2026.

To avoid compatibility issues with "modern plugins" make sure you are on the latest stable. That said, a good number of popular plugins can still work in v0.9.5. And plugins that are compatible with Vim 8 should work just fine in Vim and Neovim.

Windows

winget install Neovim.Neovim

In winstall.app/apps/Neovim you can find information about the Neovim package in winget.

If you want to compile Neovim from source see: Building on windows.

macOS

brew install neovim

In formulae.brew.sh/formula/neovim you can find information about the neovim package in homebrew.

If you want to compile from source first install the build dependencies then follow the steps on build from source, start from step 2.

Linux

Neovim is available in many Linux package managers. You can check the package version here: repology.org/project/neovim.

Not every package manager has an updated version of Neovim though. If you can't use your package manager, here's an alternative method you can follow:

1. Download appimage from github releases.

stable

curl -LO https://github.com/neovim/neovim/releases/download/stable/nvim-linux-x86_64.appimage

nightly

curl -LO https://github.com/neovim/neovim/releases/download/nightly/nvim-linux-x86_64.appimage

2. Make it executable.

chmod +x nvim-linux-x86_64.appimage

3. Verify it works correctly.

./nvim-linux-x86_64.appimage --version

4. If everything went well, move the appimage into a directory that's in your PATH environment variable.

sudo mv ./nvim-linux-x86_64.appimage /usr/local/bin/nvim

Expand: if appimage did not worked

Extract the content of the appimage.

./nvim-linux-x86_64.appimage --appimage-extract

Rename appimage directory to something more descriptive.

mv squashfs-root neovim-app

Make a symlink to the executable in any directory that is in your PATH environment variable.

sudo ln -s "$PWD/neovim-app/AppRun" /usr/local/bin/nvim

Build from source

This example is for Debian based systems. See BUILD.md if you are using another operating system.

1. Install build dependencies.

sudo apt install ninja-build gettext cmake unzip curl build-essential

2. Git clone Neovim's source code into a directory.

git clone https://github.com/neovim/neovim ~/neovim-git

3. Navigate into the directory where you downloaded Neovim's source code.

cd ~/neovim-git

4. Change to the commit of the latest stable release (this step is optional).

git switch --detach stable

5. Execute the build command.

make CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release

6. Execute the install command.

sudo make install