You can change it per filetype. For example, I have a similarly minimal vimrc that defaults to sw=4, ts=4 and expandtab, but with the following additions: au

You can change it per filetype. For example, I have a similarly minimal vimrc that defaults to sw=4, ts=4 and expandtab, but with the following additions: autocmd FileType go,make,sh set noexpandtab autocmd FileType js,json set sw=2 ts=2 Edit: I think you might also need the following to make it trigger the FileType event when you open a file in the first place: filetype plugin indent on