53
votes
Accepted
How to add indentation guides/lines
Unified answer:
If you are using tabs
I'd try using listchars:
:set listchars=tab:\|\
:set list
note: there is a space after the last \ above.
This method is good because it uses Vim's built-in ...
- 8,032
50
votes
Accepted
What does :set background=dark do?
What happens when you :set background
The basic mechanism by which :set background works is actually pretty simple, and
it is documented (although not particularly clearly) in :help 'background'.
...
- 27.5k
49
votes
How to add indentation guides/lines
Another option I use, which isn't exactly what you asked for, but accomplishes the same purpose of making it easier to see what is in the same column, is to set the following in your vimrc:
set ...
- 1,038
35
votes
Accepted
How do I customize vimdiff colors?
The colors are controlled by these four highlight groups (:help hl-DiffAdd):
DiffAdd diff mode: Added line
DiffChange diff mode: Changed line
DiffDelete diff mode: Deleted line
DiffText diff ...
- 16.7k
33
votes
How do I customize vimdiff colors?
One quick fix is to disable syntax highlighting. Sometimes the code syntax highlighting will cause the foreground text to be the same color as the vimdiff background color, making the text "invisible"....
- 730
23
votes
Accepted
List valid color schemes?
The easiest way is to use :help c_Ctrl-d after :colorscheme.
So, :colorschemeCtrl-d will output the colorschemes you have available to you.
Make sure there is a space after :colorscheme
- 5,806
23
votes
Accepted
How do I change the colour of the statusline of the currently focused window?
You can change it in your vimrc. The currently focused window is highlight group Statusline, other windows are StatuslineNC.
Example for terminal Vim:
hi StatusLine ctermfg=8 ...
- 298
21
votes
How to add indentation guides/lines
For the sake of completeness, there is also the Indent Guides plugin, which shows the indentation levels by alternating the colors of white spaces. It requires version 7.2 or later. Since it uses the ...
- 2,251
19
votes
Accepted
How can I create my own colorscheme?
Colorscheme locations
First, Vim looks in its runtime folders for a colors directory. Here is where all the colorschemes should be stored (:help 'runtimepath')
This means you will need one file that ...
17
votes
Accepted
Set cursor colour different when on a highlighted word
I use this snippet from Damian Conway's fantastic talk, More Instantly Better Vim (at 4m 59s). It causes the entire highlight to blink briefly when you leap between search results.
" Damian Conway's ...
- 27.5k
16
votes
Accepted
How do I conditionally set :colorscheme?
Lets fail with Style!
silent! colorscheme evening
silent! colorscheme solarized
The :silent! will ignore the errors at start up. Just put color schemes in reverse order of what you really want.
For ...
- 14.8k
15
votes
Accepted
When making a colorscheme, what is the label for the ~ area of the screen below EOF?
Since Vim 8 there is the EndOfBuffer highlight group for this; from :help hl-EndOfBuffer:
EndOfBuffer filler lines (~) after the last line in the buffer.
By default, this is highlighted like ...
- 55.8k
14
votes
Is it possible to use two different color backgrounds in a single vim buffer?
It's certainly possible to use a different background colour for syntax-highlighted elements. Just define the guibg and ctermbg colours in your hilight command. The former sets the background colour ...
- 27.5k
13
votes
How do I customize vimdiff colors?
Extending Ingo Karkat's solution to terminal,
hi DiffAdd ctermfg=NONE ctermbg=Green
hi DiffChange ctermfg=NONE ctermbg=NONE
hi DiffDelete ctermfg=LightBlue ctermbg=Red
...
- 233
12
votes
Accepted
Trouble Using Color Scheme in NeoVim
Main Issue
The main problem you are experiencing is caused by the ordering of the
commands in your .vimrc.
You set the g:impact_transbg variable after you load the colorscheme, and
so the variable ...
- 27.5k
12
votes
How do I restore visual mode selection highlighting?
I had this issue as well because I had switched to the "evening" color scheme in my ~/.vimrc file so that my comments were easier to read on a dark background:
:colorscheme evening
To restore visual ...
- 221
12
votes
Accepted
Highlight whole todo comment line
I'm not sure why the answer you linked to is accepted and so highly voted, because neither of the included solutions will actually work, and while a working solution is alluded to in the explanation, ...
- 27.5k
11
votes
List valid color schemes?
Another way to show the list is by set wildmenu. With this, after :colorscheme + space + tab, a list of completion is displayed and also selectable with arrow key or Ctrl-N and Ctrl-P. This is not ...
- 1,881
10
votes
How to add indentation guides/lines
I've found the indentLine plugin to be the best for this. You do need a font with the appropriate symbols though, I find Consolas on Windows and Menlo on Mac OS X work well. As is pointed out in the ...
- 201
10
votes
Accepted
Is it possible to use two different color backgrounds in a single vim buffer?
Because I was curious how well this would work, I've hacked something together
that sort of works.
As mentioned in the comments on the earlier answer, the only way to do this is
to fill up regions ...
- 55.8k
10
votes
Colorscheme's background not correct in terminal
There's two reasons why I think this may be happening:
The solarized color scheme you are using does not declare ctermfg and ctermbg for any of the features you want to highlight. Try out this color ...
- 201
10
votes
Accepted
Why does the order of :set bg=dark and :set bg=light matter?
The elflord colorscheme does set background=dark. Since it is sourced after your set bg=light it will override it.
set t_Co=256 is pointless. It doesn't do anything in GVim and you should set your ...
- 32.8k
10
votes
Accepted
Visual Differences between vim on virtualbox Ubuntu guest (through putty) OR gVim on Windows host
PuTTY, like other high-color terminals, only supports a fixed color palette of 256 colors. GVIM can use the full 24-bit RGB color space; that's why you see "finer" nuances there.
As for attributes, ...
- 16.7k
9
votes
Why does my colorscheme look different when I run vim with sudo?
When you run vim with sudo, you are running as user root, so you are using root's vimrc and .vim. Your colorscheme and other customizations set in your ~/.vimrc are not being used. You can see this by ...
- 5,874
9
votes
Accepted
Is it possible to assign a sign to "Todo" group?
Try this function :
function! SignKeyword()
silent! sign undefine todo
sign define todo text=>> texthl=Search
g/\v\C(<TODO>|<FIXME>)/execute "sign place 9999 line=" . ...
- 6,426
9
votes
Accepted
How to save color scheme in gVim between sessions?
In Vim, settings are saved across sessions by writing them in an init script called vimrc.
On Windows, that vimrc is supposed to be at this location:
$HOME/vimfiles/vimrc
The installer may or may ...
- 32.8k
9
votes
Make vim show all the colors
The colorscheme must be missing cterm definitions, the full highlight command should look like:
hi Normal cterm=NONE ctermfg=15 ctermbg=7 gui=NONE guifg=White guibg=grey20
If your terminal supports ...
- 1,516
9
votes
Accepted
Strange Highlighting during Git Commit
Your Vim setup is actually behaving correctly, here.
Git commit messages are recommended always to have a blank line after the first line. The strange colouring you're seeing is highlighting this as ...
- 27.5k
9
votes
Accepted
Neovim Gray Background
A quick rundown on colorschemes
See :help :colorscheme. Essentially it sources a file containing :highlight commands.
What are highlight commands?
Statements of the form
:hi[ghlight] [default] {group-...
- 20.9k
9
votes
How to set a colorscheme that still shows spelling errors?
Here is a bit more complete answer to address this annoyance:
" Force to use underline for spell check results
augroup SpellUnderline
autocmd!
autocmd ColorScheme *
\ highlight SpellBad
\ ...
- 101
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible