photo: courtesy of @nixCraft
Vim syntax highlighting can be fantastically garish. It is, without a doubt, very useful, but anyone can make a colour scheme and not everyone should. With that in mind, these are some I like that may look horrible to you. If my choices don't suit you, just do a google search for "best vim colors": a LOT of people have opinions about this. In fact, stop reading and go to http://vimcolors.com/ first to get a taste of the huge variety available.
The colour schemes below are exclusively for black or very dark backgrounds. See below for download links.
General purpose: ir_black or derivative tir_black
Debian defaults: elflord or slate (if I haven't had time to install my preferred colours)
16 Colour Terminals: wuye
Bash: black_angus, tir_black
CSS: shobogenzo
Dot/Graphviz: herald, molokai, nightsky, jellyx
HTML: nightsky, shobogenzo, tir_black, herald, jammy
Java: candy, candycode, ir_black, jammy, nightsky, oceanblack, shobogenzo!
JavaScript: nightsky
JSP: nightsky
Makefile: gardener, tir_black, ir_black
Markdown: badwolf, jellybeans, tir_black, wuye
Python: tir_black
RST: nightsky, NOT oceanblack, NOT slatedark
Vimcode: shobogenzo, jammy
XML: candy, herald, jammy, ir_black, NOT shobogenzo
YML: badwolf, black_angus, darkdevel, tir_black
Links
- badwolf
- black_angus
- candy
- candycode
- darkdevel
- darkmate (note that darkmate by default changes your font - which I think is totally inappropriate for a colorscheme, and I've edited that out)
- gardener
- hemisu
- herald
- ir_black
- jammy
- jellybeans
- jellyx
- molokai
- moria (comes with both dark and light schemes - I found its detection didn't work well so I edited the file(s) and forced it permanently dark)
- nightsky
- oceanblack
- peppers
- shobogenzo
- slate (comes with Ubuntu's vim 7.4 collection of default colours, couldn't find a good link to a stand-alone package ... you could look at SlateDark)
- tir_black
- wuye
- A few others I haven't deleted but that haven't stood out either ...: adaryn, advantage, blugrine, mustang
- and I think I should mention "solarized:" I dislike it but it's so popular that I think it should be mentioned here. Google
Configuration
Getting 256 colours out of vim in a console can be a real PITA. Vim takes its cues from the terminal its in, and if the terminal says it only supports eight colours, vim believes it.
# add this to /etc/profile on Linux systems
if [ -e /usr/share/terminfo/x/xterm?256color ]
then
export TERM='xterm-256color'
else
export TERM='xterm-color'
fi
" Add this to your ~/.vimrc
if &term=="xterm-256color"
set t_Co=256 " "terminal has 256 colors"
endif
If you're on a Mac AND using tmux, you have to go a step further:
# add to ~/.tmux.conf because tmux has trouble figuring out the number of colours set -g default-terminal "screen-256color" # your Mac supports it