How can I change the colorscheme of the vim terminal buffer?

Question

I use GVim with the gruvbox colorscheme. When I open a terminal inside vim with :term, the colors are different, it looks like another colorscheme is applied.

The other terminals I use (urxvt and xfce4-terminal) also look nothing like what I see in the vim terminal.

Where is the coloscheme of the vim terminal buffer configured and how can I change it ?

Answer 1

In GVim, you can control the 16 ANSI colors used by your terminal with the g:terminal_ansi_colors variable.

See :help g:terminal_ansi_colors:

In GUI mode or with 'termguicolors', the 16 ANSI colors used by default in new terminal windows may be configured using the variable g:terminal_ansi_colors, which should be a list of 16 color names or hexadecimal color codes, similar to those accepted by highlight-guifg. [...]

The term_setansicolors() function can be used to change the colors, and term_getansicolors() to get the currently used colors.

Answer 2

In modern vim/neovim there is :h g:terminal_ansi_colors (vim) or 16 of g:terminal_color_0 .. g:terminal_color_15 (neovim).

If you open gruvbox colorscheme you use, you will find those definitions there (most probably).

Basically:

1. your whatever terminal can have palette of base 16 colors defined (there are defaults for each type of terminal, but you can also redefine it).
2. In Vim when you open a :term those default/redefined base 16 colors are applied to it unless you or a colorscheme again redefine them with g:terminal_ansi_colors to match your colorscheme

Answer 3

I had the same question (I am using vim 8.2) and a google search brought me here. I searched vim help for g:terminal_ansi_colors and made a list as they suggested of rgb values for gruvbox using the neutral and bright colors listed here: https://github.com/morhetz/gruvbox-contrib/blob/master/color.table. Then I searched more and found you need to set highlight Terminal guibg= and same for guifg to have a gruvbox background. This code in vimrc gave me a nice gruvbox themed terminal:

let g:terminal_ansi_colors = [
  \'#282828', '#CC241D', '#98971A', '#D79921',
  \'#458588', '#B16286', '#689D6A', '#D65D0E',
  \'#fb4934', '#b8bb26', '#fabd2f', '#83a598',
  \'#d3869b', '#8ec07c', '#fe8019', '#FBF1C7' ]

highlight Terminal guibg='#282828'
highlight Terminal guifg='#ebdbb2'