How does Vim's autoread work?

Question

:h autoread says:

When a file has been detected to have been changed outside of Vim and it has not been changed inside of Vim, automatically

Answer 1

I use the following snippet which triggers autoread whenever I switch buffer or when focusing vim again:

au FocusGained,BufEnter * :silent! !

Also, it makes sense to use it in combination with the following snippet so that the files are always saved when leaving a buffer or vim, avoiding conflict situations:

au FocusLost,WinLeave * :silent! w

---

EDIT: If you want to speed up the write by disabling any hooks that run on save (e.g. linters), you can prefix the w command with noautocmd:

au FocusLost,WinLeave * :silent! noautocmd w