How do I configure the Vim airline plugin to look like its own project screenshot?

Question

I am trying to get the vim-airline up and running.

I have required it via vundle in my ~./vimrc:

Plugin 'bling/vim-airline'

I have installed it and expected my Vim to look like the screenshot on its project page:

Yet it looks like this:

Concerning the fonts, I tried adding:

let g:airline_powerline_fonts = 1

Yet the icons then are just gibberish.

What am I missing?

---

I just found that for the colors, as described in the FAQ, I can add in my .vimrc:

set t_Co=256

Yet this still leads to line looks distorted:

Especially the Git integration about (branch name with the icon). Or the the way the >-"arrow" is displayed. I want that eye-candy, too. Can I even achieve that in Bash? Or would I need a different shell?

Basically, I want Vim to look like the example screenshot on the plugin page, as I expected it to be the default of the plugin. How can I achieve that?

Answer 1

One has to realize that the feature implemented by airline are inspired by the powerline plugin.

Furthermore, I was relying on the docs too much, not realizing that there is well-written airline help document shipped with itself:

:h airline

Reading its documentation helps understanding the functionality of this plugin.

Font

As mentioned in the powerline docs:

Powerline uses several special glyphs to get the arrow effect and some custom symbols for developers. This requires having either a symbol font or a patched font installed in the system. Used application (e.g. terminal emulator) must also either be configured to use patched fonts (in some cases even support it because custom glyphs live in private use area which some applications reserve for themselves) or support fontconfig for powerline to work properly with powerline-specific glyphs.

So one can patch existing fonts (see the powerline font section docs or you may install a collection or already prepared fonts.

You can install a powerline font collection via:

git clone git@github.com:powerline/fonts.git
cd fontd
./install.sh

I have chosen Meslo LG L DZ for Powerline in my terminal.

One has to add to .vimrc:

let g:airline_powerline_fonts = 1

Colors

For the colors, you have to set in your .vimrc:

set t_Co=256

as desribed in the FAQ.

Theme

In order to see your current theme, run:

 :AirlineTheme

for me the default was dark.

You can change them for the current session by:

 :AirlineTheme THEME_NAME

You can find a list of themes here.

@todo: Find out theme used in the screenshot. I actually like luna more, yet that is an entirely different matter.

My changes currently let vim look like this:

Answer 2

just do this

let g:airline_powerline_fonts = 1

Even I had stuggled with the same. If it didnt show properly then just set you terminal font to something like Cascadia Code PL (PL for powerline) or anyother powerline font. If you use neovim-qt then set this

GuiFont AnyPlFont:h:size
GuiFont Cascadia Code PL:h:20