"Ctrl + X" in WSL opens only Vim editor window

[IT-Knight]

What happened?

I have configured gemini cli inside WSL - Ubuntu 24.04 for the native support of the cli (and it works faster and better).
Using Powershell 7.5.

When I attemp to open the prompt in an "external editor" or whatether editor, except Vim (the window you can move out of only using ":wq") — no any trick works to overcome this:

• changing default system editor with sudo update-alternatives --config editor
• wrapping Vim to open Micro
• changing Vim aliases
• setup the cli's /editor to Vs Code or None

ALSO: I cannot safely copy-paste anything from the system buffer.

What did you expect to happen?

When I press Ctrl + X, I expect to open the prompt in nano/micro/vs code — anything except Vim (or Vm).
In windows I used to see it in the default Notepad.

I'd expect to have a safe way to copy-paste multiline texts/logs (so it doesn't exec the prompt) (via external editor).

Client information

• CLI Version: 0.23.0
• Git Commit: 3ff0558
• Session ID: b8a2314f-de62-4a3b-81e8-410a4d5f6b0b
• Operating System: linux v24.12.0
• Sandbox Environment: no sandbox
• Model Version: auto-gemini-3
• Memory Usage: 250.6 MB
• Terminal Name: Unknown
• Terminal Background: Unknown
• Kitty Keyboard Protocol: Unsupported

Login information

Google Account

Anything else we need to know?

No response

[jacob314]

Fyi @scidomino for paste issues

[scidomino]

The ways to set the editor used by ctrl+x are:

• set the VISUAL env var
• set the EDITOR env var

The general.preferredEditor option in settings.json (which can be updated by calling /editor) should work but does not due to a bug I just found.

I will fix the bug, in the meantime, you can use the env vars to set your editor.

As for the copy/paste issues:

• I fixed a paste issue recently in Always enable bracketed paste #16179. Please try the latest code to see if the issue persists.
• Are you using tmux? If so, you will have to mess with your tmux settings to allow it to propagate copy/paste signals.