Live Reference

LiveRefs is a lightweight Vim plugin that gives you "find references under cursor" functionality, similar to what you’d get in VSCode or smth, but powered entirely by Vimscript and built-in popups.

When your cursor rests on a word, live-reference scans the current buffer for other occurrences of that word (ignoring keywords, comments, and trivial words) and displays them in a floating popup.
You can then jump to a reference with the corresponding number key.

Features

• Automatically shows references to the word under cursor (on CursorHold).
• Ignores comments, language keywords, and common words.
• Popup window with references displayed and clickable/jumpable.
• Press a number key (1–9) to jump to a reference directly.
• Configurable word length, max results, and update timing.
• Simple toggle to enable/disable.

Installation

Use your favorite plugin manager. Example with vim-plug:

Plug 'saltytine/live-reference'

Reload Vim and run :PlugInstall.

Usage

• Move the cursor onto a word and wait (CursorHold triggers after updatetime ms).
• A popup will appear listing other references in the buffer.
• Press 1–9 to jump to a reference, or <Esc> / ; to close the popup.
• Popup closes automatically when you move, insert text, or leave the window.

Commands

• :LiveRefsToggle — Enable/disable LiveRefs.
• :LiveRefsShow — Manually trigger reference lookup.
• Mapping: <leader>lr — Toggles LiveRefs (default mapping).

Configuration

You can tweak the behavior via globals in your vimrc:

let g:live_refs_enabled = 1        " Enable by default (1/0)
let g:live_refs_min_word_len = 3   " Minimum word length to consider
let g:live_refs_max_results = 10   " Max number of results in popup
let g:live_refs_updatetime = 700   " CursorHold trigger time (ms)

Ignored

• Comments (//, #, /* ... */, etc, detected via syntax groups).
• Common English words (the, is, and, …).
• Language keywords for many languages (C, C++, Python, JS, Rust, Go, Swift, Vimscript, etc).
• Short all-uppercase constants (FOO, BAR).
• TODO/FIXME/NOTE/WARNING tags.
• Preprocessor directives.