Vim automatically tires to indent pasted text when running inside a terminal. To avoid this ‘paste’ mode can be set and unset before and after the paste operation, by the following commands:

:set paste

# paste from clipboard

:set nopaste

Toggle key

To speed up this process it is possible to specify a key sequence that toggles the ‘paste’ mode.

set pastetoggle=<F2>

Now you hit F2 key to toggle the paste before and after pasting.

Automatically detect paste

Here’s a little trick from Coderwall, that uses terminal’s bracketed paste mode to automatically set/unset Vim’s ‘paste’ mode. The following lines should be added to .vimrc:

let &t_SI .= "\<Esc>[?2004h"
let &t_EI .= "\<Esc>[?2004l"

inoremap <special> <expr> <Esc>[200~ XTermPasteBegin()

function! XTermPasteBegin()
set pastetoggle=<Esc>[201~
set paste
return ""
endfunction

Under tmux

If Vim is inside of a Tmux session then double escape is required. The above config for Tmux users looks like this:

function! WrapForTmux(s)
if !exists('$TMUX')
return a:s
endif

let tmux_start = "\<Esc>Ptmux;"
let tmux_end = "\<Esc>\\"

return tmux_start . substitute(a:s, "\<Esc>", "\<Esc>\<Esc>", 'g') . tmux_end
endfunction

let &t_SI .= WrapForTmux("\<Esc>[?2004h")
let &t_EI .= WrapForTmux("\<Esc>[?2004l")

function! XTermPasteBegin()
set pastetoggle=<Esc>[201~
set paste
return ""
endfunction

inoremap <special> <expr> <Esc>[200~ XTermPasteBegin()