How to stop helm deleting vertical split when opening helm buffer?

Question

I have (setq helm-always-two-windows t). When invoking a helm buffer i.e helm-find-files or helm-mini with 2 vertical splits helm deletes the other window in preperation to perform a possible persistent action in the currently selected window.

Is there any way to stop helm deleting the other window and preserve the 2 vertical splits when the helm buffer is opened?

ido-mode along with ido-vertical-mode seems to have the exact behaviour I'm after with vertical splits as it has no need to accommodate a persistent action.

Answer 1

Below is part of docstring of the user option helm-always-two-windows:

When non--nil helm will use two windows in this frame. That is one window to display ‘helm-buffer’ and one to display ‘helm-current-buffer’.

So (setq helm-always-two-windows t) won't do what you want.

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Here is a work-around by using shackle

(setq helm-display-function #'pop-to-buffer)

(setq shackle-rules '(("\\`\\*helm.*?\\*\\'" :regexp t :align t :ratio 0.46)))
(shackle-mode)

Note, the only downside that I know is helm's full-frame won't work anymore, e.g., helm-top won't use full-frame.