# How to exit Vim

> Learn how to finally exit Vim: press escape, then type :wq to write and quit, or :q! to quit without saving your changes. No more getting stuck.

Author: [Flavio Copes](https://flaviocopes.com/about/) | Published: 2019-02-12 | Topics: [CLI](https://flaviocopes.com/tags/cli/) | Canonical: https://flaviocopes.com/how-to-exit-vim/

Want to save your changes and exit? Press the `esc` key, then type `:wq`, which means `w`rite and `q`uit.

Want to exit without saving changes? Press the `esc` key, then type `:q!`

Don't feel bad, you're not alone in not knowing how to exit Vim,, and [if you search Twitter you'll see all sorts of memes and funny tweets](https://twitter.com/search?q=exit%20vim):

- "How do you generate a random string? Put a first year Computer Science student in Vim and ask them to save and exit."
- "One does not simply exit Vim"
- "Nobody knows how to exit Vim"
- "I've been using Vim for a long time now, mainly because I can't figure out how to exit"

It also looks to be one (if not _the one_) most popular question on Stack Overflow.

Don't get me wrong. I like Vim. I don't love it, it's just a tool. I usually use [VS Code](https://flaviocopes.com/vscode) for day to day writing and coding, but I sometimes use it.