Reputation: 4578
I cannot figure out how to set the background color to black in Vim. I am running Vim from Mac OS X 10.5.8's Terminal.app (does this mean that I am using MacVim?).
My .gvimrc
file looks like this:
syntax on
set background = dark
All this appears to accomplish is to make text more bold than before.
Doing things like
:highlight Normal guibg=Black
in Vim doesn't seem to do anything either.
Also should I have anything in my .vimrc
file? I am not sure which configuration file is relevant to the Vim that is automatically installed on Mac OSX (that is accessible with the vim
command at the terminal).
Upvotes: 1
Views: 11995
Reputation: 196476
Well, technically, it is very possible to use MacVim in a terminal. I do that everyday and it works great!
But you are using Mac OS X's default Vim in a terminal. Since it's not a GUI version of Vim, it won't read your ~/.gvimrc
and it won't apply :hi Normal guibg=black
for obvious reasons.
Settings for CLI Vim and general settings should go into ~/.vimrc
, leaving ~/.gvimrc
for GUI-specific settings.
To get a black background in CLI Vim, type the following in normal mode:
:hi Normal ctermbg=black
To persist this setting, add the same line (without the :
) to your ~/.vimrc
, preferably after any colorscheme
command.
Depending on the colorscheme you are using, Normal
may not be the only place where to do that change.
Upvotes: 8
Reputation: 31419
If you are using Terminal.app you are not using MacVim. MacVim is a standalone gVim package for mac.
To change the background to be black you need to change Terminal.app's Preferences.
Go to Preferences -> Settings and choose Pro under profiles on the left. (Or create your own profile that has a black background.)
Also those commands should be in .vimrc
instead of .gvimrc
. To understand the difference of the two type :h vimrc
and :h gvimrc
in vim.
Upvotes: 4