Colorscheme not display correctly for vim on mac terminal

Question

I start up vim from mac terminal like so:

vim filename

But my colorschemes do not load properly (I tried loading desert.vim, desert256.vim and solarized.vim).

desert256.vim has a black background and white text.

desert.vim doesn't make a difference.

solarized.vim has blue font and grey background.

I tried a lot of solutions online, but cannot get it to work. (like adding lines to .vimrc). My current .vimrc is:

syntax enable
set background=dark
colorscheme desert256
set t_Co=256
let colors_name = "desert"

Answer 1

It is very common for a fancy colorscheme (such as solarized, base16-*, you name it) to require palette changes in a terminal. Without it you will face ugly colors.

I generally avoid such colorschemes in terminals and use them only in GUI vim.

To solve it -- goto the place you have obtained colorscheme, find description on how to properly use it. Usually it is smth about changing first 16 terminal colors. Solarized example: https://github.com/altercation/solarized . There you can find how to redefine your colors for different stuff including osx terminal.

PS

There are also colorshemes that are not made with terminals in mind -- they define only gui colors.

Answer 2

Look for colorschemes that are compatible with the terminal and the mac OS terminal colors. Here is a list of them (search for the word "solarized"): https://github.com/rafi/awesome-vim-colorschemes