Auto Session takes advantage of Neovim's existing session management capabilities to provide seamless automatic session management.

1. When starting nvim with no arguments, auto-session will try to restore an existing session for the current cwd if one exists.
2. When starting nvim . with some argument, auto-session will do nothing.
3. Even after starting nvim with an argument, a session can still be manually restored by running :RestoreSession.
4. Any session saving and restoration takes into consideration the current working directory cwd.
5. When piping to nvim, e.g: cat myfile | nvim, auto-session behaves like #2.

⚠️ Please note that if there are errors in your config, restoring the session might fail, if that happens, auto session will then disable auto saving for the current session. Manually saving a session can still be done by calling :SaveSession.

AutoSession now tracks cwd changes! By default, handling is as follows: DirChangedPre (before the cwd actually changes): - Save the current session - Clear all buffers %bd!. This guarantees buffers don't bleed to the next session. - Clear jumps. Also done so there is no bleading between sessions. - Run the pre_cwd_changed_hook DirChanged (after the cwd has changed): - Restore session using new cwd - Run the post_cwd_changed_hook

Now when the user changes the cwd with :cd some/new/dir auto-session handles it gracefully, saving the current session so there aren't losses and loading the session for the upcoming cwd if it exists.

Hooks are available for custom actions before and after the cwd is changed. These hooks can be configured through the cwd_change_handling key as follows:

require("auto-session").setup {
  log_level = "error",

  cwd_change_handling = {
    restore_upcoming_session = true, -- already the default, no need to specify like this, only here as an example
    pre_cwd_changed_hook = nil, -- already the default, no need to specify like this, only here as an example
    post_cwd_changed_hook = function() -- example refreshing the lualine status line _after_ the cwd changes
      require("lualine").refresh() -- refresh lualine so the new session name is displayed in the status bar
    end,
  },
}

Any plugin manager should do, I use Packer.nvim

use {
  'rmagatti/auto-session',
  config = function()
    require("auto-session").setup {
      log_level = "error",
      auto_session_suppress_dirs = { "~/", "~/Projects", "~/Downloads", "/"},
    }
  end
}

Auto Session by default stores sessions in vim.fn.stdpath('data').."/sessions/".

One can set the auto_session root dir that will be used for auto session saving and restoring.

let g:auto_session_root_dir = path/to/my/custom/dir

" or use lua
lua << EOF
local opts = {
  log_level = 'info',
  auto_session_enable_last_session = false,
  auto_session_root_dir = vim.fn.stdpath('data').."/sessions/",
  auto_session_enabled = true,
  auto_save_enabled = nil,
  auto_restore_enabled = nil,
  auto_session_suppress_dirs = nil,
  auto_session_use_git_branch = nil,
  -- the configs below are lua only
  bypass_session_save_file_types = nil
}

require('auto-session').setup(opts)
EOF

One can show the current session name in the statusline by using an auto-session helper function.

Lualine example config and how it looks

require('lualine').setup{
  options = {
    theme = 'tokyonight',
  },
  sections = {lualine_c = {require('auto-session-library').current_session_name}}
}

auto_session_suppress_dirs and auto_session_allowed_dirs support base paths with * wildcard (e.g.: /my/base/path/*)

require("auto-session").setup {
  bypass_session_save_file_types = nil, -- table: Bypass auto save when only buffer open is one of these file types
  cwd_change_handling = { -- table: Config for handling the DirChangePre and DirChanged autocmds, can be set to nil to disable altogether
    restore_upcoming_session = true, -- boolean: restore session for upcoming cwd on cwd change
    pre_cwd_changed_hook = nil, -- function: This is called after auto_session code runs for the `DirChangedPre` autocmd
    post_cwd_changed_hook = nil, -- function: This is called after auto_session code runs for the `DirChanged` autocmd
  },
}

For a better experience with the plugin overall using this config for sessionoptions is recommended.

Lua

vim.o.sessionoptions="blank,buffers,curdir,folds,help,tabpages,winsize,winpos,terminal,localoptions"

VimL

set sessionoptions+=winpos,terminal,folds

⚠️ if you use packer.nvim's lazy loading feature, and you have the options value in your sessionoptions beware it might lead to weird behaviour with the lazy loading, especially around key-based lazy loading where keymaps are kept and thus the lazy loading mapping packer creates never gets set again.

This optional feature enables the keeping track and loading of the last session. This loading of a last session happens only when a RestoreSession could not find a session for the current dir. This feature can come in handy when starting Neovim from a GUI for example. :warning: This feature is still experimental and as of right now it interferes with the plugin's ability to auto create new sessions when opening Neovim in a new directory.

require('auto-session').setup {
    auto_session_enable_last_session=true,
}

⚠️ WARNING ⚠️ If the directory does not exist, default directory will be used and an error message will be printed.

Auto Session exposes two commands that can be used or mapped to any keybindings for manually saving and restoring sessions.

:SaveSession " saves or creates a session in the currently set `auto_session_root_dir`.
:SaveSession ~/my/custom/path " saves or creates a session in the specified directory path.
:RestoreSession " restores a previously saved session based on the `cwd`.
:RestoreSession ~/my/custom/path " restores a previously saved session based on the provided path.
:RestoreSessionFromFile ~/session/path " restores any currently saved session
:DeleteSession " deletes a session in the currently set `auto_session_root_dir`.
:DeleteSession ~/my/custom/path " deleetes a session based on the provided path.
:Autosession search
:Autosession delete

You can use the Autosession {delete|search} command to open a picker using vim.ui.select this will allow you to either delete or search for a session to restore.

Command hooks exist in the format: {hook_name}

• {presave}: executes _before a session is saved
• {saveextra}: execute _after a session is saved, return string will save to *x.vim, reference :help mks
• {postsave}: executes _after a session is saved
• {prerestore}: executs _before a session is restored
• {postrestore}: executs _after a session is restored
• {predelete}: executs _before a session is deleted
• {postdelete}: executs _after a session is deleted

Hooks are configured by setting

let g:auto_session_{hook_name}_cmds = ["{hook_command1}", "{hook_command2}"]

" or use lua
lua << EOF
require('auto-session').setup {
    {hook_name}_cmds = {"{hook_command1}", "{hook_command2}"}
    save_extra_cmds = {
        function()
            return [[echo "hello world"]]
        end
    }
}
EOF

hook_command is a valid command mode command. e.g. to close NERDTree before saving the session.

let g:auto_session_pre_save_cmds = ["tabdo NERDTreeClose"]

Hooks can also be lua functions For example to update the directory of the session in nvim-tree:

local function restore_nvim_tree()
    local nvim_tree = require('nvim-tree')
    nvim_tree.change_dir(vim.fn.getcwd())
    nvim_tree.refresh()
end

require('auto-session').setup {
    {hook_name}_cmds = {"{vim_cmd_1}", restore_nvim_tree, "{vim_cmd_2}"}
}

One might run into issues with Firenvim or another plugin and want to disable auto_session altogether based on some condition. For this example, as to not try and save sessions for Firenvim, we disable the plugin if the started_by_firenvim variable is set.

if exists('g:started_by_firenvim')
  let g:auto_session_enabled = v:false
endif

One can also disable the plugin by setting the auto_session_enabled option to false at startup.

nvim "+let g:auto_session_enabled = v:false"

For troubleshooting refer to the wiki page

Session Lens is a companion plugin to auto-session built on top of Telescope.nvim for easy switching between existing sessions.

See installation and usage instructions in the plugin's page.

Neovim > 0.7

Tested with:

NVIM v0.7.0