Vimium's key bindings are great, but they can get in the way of useful features on some sites. For example, GMail has excellent keyboard shortcuts of its own. So, how can you use Vimium on sites such as GMail?

You have three options...

Vimium implements exclusion rules. These control how and when Vimium is enabled. You can edit your exclusion rules on the Vimium options page or in the Vimium page popup. Each exclusion rule consists of two parts: a URL pattern and a list of excluded keys.

If the list of excluded keys is not empty, then Vimium is partially disabled; for example:

In this case, Vimium is enabled as normal, except for the three listed keys. These are passed through to the underlying page. Here, we're using GMail's native j/k bindings, and GMail's native help screen (?). All other Vimium keys are handled by Vimium, as usual.

You can quickly change excluded keys using the Vimium page popup.

Here's a more complete exclusion rule example for GMail:

Here's a version that you can copy/paste:

?jkpxercgils#ud/

If the list of excluded keys is empty, then Vimium is wholly disabled; for example:

In this case, Vimium is wholly disabled on GMail.

In insert mode, all Vimium bindings are temporarily disabled, and all keystrokes (except Escape) are passed through to the underlying page. Enter insert mode with i, and leave insert mode with Escape.

URL patterns are Javascript regular expressions. In addition, * is replaced with .* -- so it matches any sequence of zero or more characters.

It is common to add and/or remove excluded keys. A quick way of doing so is to bind a keyboard shortcut (for example, Ctrl-Shift-V) to the Vimium popup on the Chrome extensions page (chrome://extensions/, at the bottom of the page).