📢 It’s time to fix Word Wrap + Relative Line Numbers in VS Code! Upvote Issue #323238
If you are a Vim/Neovim user in VS Code, or if you heavily rely on a keyboard-driven workflow with editor.lineNumbers: "relative", you’ve definitely run into this frustrating brick wall:
As soon as editor.wordWrap is turned on, virtual lines (wrapped lines) display absolutely nothing in the gutter.
Because VS Code only binds line numbers to physical lines (\n), performing a precise vertical jump like 5j or 12k becomes a guessing game if your code or Markdown blocks wrap across the screen. You have to manually count the visual lines yourself, which completely defeats the purpose of relative numbers.
There is an open, feature request on the official VS Code repository that targets the core layout engine (Monaco) to finally allow rendering numbers on wrapped lines:
🔗 GitHub Issue #323238: Option to display relative line numbers for virtual/wrapped lines
Why we need you to upvote this NOW:
- Extensions cannot fix this: The VS Code Decoration and Gutter APIs are strictly restricted to physical line indices. No extension can inject custom UI into a soft-wrapped line. This must be fixed natively by Microsoft.
- VS Code’s backlog triage: The development team prioritizes features based on community engagement and the number of 👍 reactions on GitHub issues. This is issue will be auto closed if no one engage.
If you want to finally get a layout option like "editor.renderRelativeNumbersOnWrappedLines": true to make modal editing seamless with word wrap, please take 10 seconds to click the link above and drop a 👍 thumbs-up reaction on the first post of the issue.
Let’s get this on the dev team's radar for the upcoming releases!