Telescope[1] is pretty central to navigation in Neovim these days. Think Ctrl-P in VSCode, but for any entity in your editor or workspace, not just files. Files in workspace, buffers (open files), ripgrep results, LSP symbols / references, etc. Also provides a live preview of search results without having to open them. Plus easily add results to your quickfix list, making large-scale edits easy.

[1]:https://github.com/nvim-telescope/telescope.nvim

I am not the person you asked, but with Telescope you can check/toggle open buffers very quickly, once you get used to it, its far quicker than using tabs(for open buffers).

I do have nvim-tree installed but I rarely use it as most times I either navigate files from within definition or go to file from imports or use grep or just search to open from Telescope.

Check out TJDevries's videos about Personal IDE and about kickstart nvim, he is a neovim and Telescope maintainer so he highlights is various usage very well.

IMO, when switching to neovim you have to struggle for a week or so to learn its ways than trying to make it identical to VSCode. I did not switch to neovim until I learned basic file navigation through vim emulator on VSCode.As that was the hardest thing for me when I first tried vim/neovim.

Buffers. Telescope.

I remember learning vim and not understanding how people used it because you couldn't change files. Using buffers, and some kind of search to load files in made it clear.

Telescope is a good option for file search, and this also has grep.