The default register

When you yank in Helix, the text doesn’t go to your system clipboard (by default). Instead, it goes into a register. A register is just a storage location for text — like a clipboard, but living inside Helix. Helix has many registers, each with a one-character name.

Let’s not think about the different registers just yet. Most of the time, when we yank and paste, we don’t name a register at all, and Helix uses the default register, ".

Something worth knowing is that the default register is also filled by deletions and changes (d and c) — not just by yanking. Deleting text is the same as yanking it and then removing it. That’s unintuitive at first, because a delete can overwrite the text you just yanked, but it’s really useful: most of the time you aren’t deleting something, you’re moving it.

If you genuinely want to delete without touching the register, there’s a register for that: step 6 covers "_d.

Work through the checklist below — this move is super useful for rearranging paragraphs, sentences, and code blocks.