The runtimepath

When Neovim starts up, init.lua isn’t the only configuration file that Neovim looks for. Neovim actually looks for a bunch of additional configuration files on something called the runtimepath.

What is the runtimepath?

The runtimepath is a group of directories that Neovim will search inside of when it starts up for these additional configuration files. They can be directories internal to Neovim, but can also be created by the user too.

Opening Neovim and running :h runtimepath will give you an exhaustive list of these directories.

You can see that it searches a lot of different directories including as the very first one $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/nvim - our config directory!

Underneath this, it then lists all of the directories it will look for when Neovim runs, from within the first list of directories.

So for example, it will search $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/nvim and some other internal directories for a colors/ directory, plugin/ directory, lua/ directory, etc.

Testing the runtime path directories

Create the directory .config/nvim/plugin/. Inside of it, create a hello.lua file. Open it and write print(“Hello from plugin!”), save the file, and re-load or source Neovim. As it’s on the runtimepath, It will run the code every time you open Neovim - just like the init.lua file.

Did you know?

Runtime directories can exist in multiple places, i.e. in Neovim internally and within your config directory. They won’t conflict, but have a specific execution order. Some plugins also make use of them.