The window menu: Space-w

If you remember one key for window management, make it this one: Space-w in normal mode. Pressing Space opens Helix’s space menu, and w inside it opens the window menu — a little popup listing every window operation Helix has: creating splits (s, v), closing them (q), navigating between windows, swapping them around… basically everything you’ll ever need. You don’t have to memorise any of it up front — the popup shows the keys, and a second later you’ll have them in your fingers.

In a terminal, the same menu also opens on Ctrl-w. Don’t try that here: browsers claim Ctrl-w for themselves (on most systems it closes the current tab), so the keystroke never reaches Helix at all. Space-w opens exactly the same menu everywhere — in the browser and in your terminal — so it’s the one worth learning.

Work through the checklist: create and close some windows from the menu.