How can I change the syntax highlighting for currently highlighted search item?

Question

When I search for something with / I get a series of finds, and as I press n for next, it highlights the next one. I always think I'm on the wrong one. Maybe my eyes see green and red, and they think I'm on green. I don't know, but I have to adjust those two colors.

How do I do that? Code is also in the screenshot below...

I can only edit the green background by changing Search but I can't seem to change the red background which signifies the item I'm currently on.

Answer 1

The current search colour is set by the IncSearch highlight group.
That's the colour you'll see, while typing your search, on the current item (by the way, you can use <c-t> and <c-g> while typing to select previous / next item).

But once you hit enter, vim should display only one colour (from the search group), so I guess you are using a plugin to display a different colour for the current item.

EDIT

That was driving me crazy. I wrote a function that highlights the match in a different colour. Well, it's probably not the way to go, since a mapping is needed on n and N (and anything that starts a search, really), and it keeps the 'search hit bottom' from disappearing until the screen is moved.

Besides this caveat, it works quite fine.

function! HLCurrentMatch() abort
    call matchadd('IncSearch', '\c\%#'.@/, 101)
    redraw
endfunction
nnoremap <silent> n n:call HLCurrent()<cr>
nnoremap <silent> N N:call HLCurrent()<cr>

My vimscript skills are poor, but here's the main things to make it more viable in my opinion:

• Check if we're back to the first match, in order to, say, use a different match, which would even be better than the 'back to first match' message
• Enable it right when a new match is defined (with /, *, #...)

FINAL

Here it is. This will use different highlight groups for the current match and for the edge matches. Courtesy to @Zorzi for his help on this question

function! HLCurrent() abort
    if exists("currmatch")
        call matchdelete(currmatch)
    endif
    " match only on cursor
    let patt = '\c\%#'.@/
    " check prev and next match
    let prevmatch = search(@/, 'bWn')
    let nextmatch = search(@/, 'Wn')
    " if on first or last match
    if prevmatch == 0 || nextmatch == 0
        let currmatch = matchadd('EdgeSearch', patt, 101)
    else
        let currmatch = matchadd('IncSearch', patt, 101)
    endif
    redraw
endfunction
nnoremap <silent> n n:call HLCurrent()<cr>
nnoremap <silent> N N:call HLCurrent()<cr>

You'll need to define a "EdgeSearch" highlight group, for example:

highlight EdgeSearch guibg=green ctermbg=black

As for the "search hit bottom" message, it's not needed any more. It can be disabled with set shortmess+=s.

The code I use may change over time and can be found here.