MacVim Open File In Existing Window

Is there a way to set up MacVim to open a new file in the current window in a running MacVim instance? I currently have the MacVim preference "Open new files in a new tab in the current window" set, but ideally I'd just like to open new files the way ":e new_file" works, without the tabs.

My main motivation is that I currently use NERDTree and Bufexplorer for my workflow and don't need the tabs at all. I'm also using PeepOpen, which is awesome except it always opens files based on MacVim's preferences, so the best I can do is get it to open in the current MacVim window with a new tab.


  1. Update to MacVim 7.3
  2. Go into the General Preferences
  3. Under "Open files from applications:" choose "in the current window"
  4. In the pull down menu below this option select "and set the arglist"

You can also add:

alias mvim='open -a MacVim'

to your .bash_profile

This seems like the simplest solution to me.


I personally use a command like this, after seeing everything here and resorting to experimenting with what

mvim --help 

turned up.

I found that

mvim --remote-tab-silent foo.txt

worked for me and then I soon added an alias to my .profile. Yes, it barfs if you don't feed it a file after the option, but who opens a blank file with no name anyway?