14

I'm using MacVim and I am attempting to change the default theme. I have the following in my .vimrc file (and in .gvimrc as well):

 colorscheme macvim

But the theme remains unchanged. What am I doing wrong?

The file is read in without errors but the scheme doesn't change. Also, if I download alternate themes, where do they go?

user3439894
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KevDog
  • 243

4 Answers4

8

By default, you should put custom colorschemes/themes into: ~/.vim/colors

Note that you may need to create the .vim directory in your home directory if it does not already exist.

After doing so, your :colorscheme command should automatically pick up the theme.

Jason Salaz
  • 24,471
8

This is what I have in my ~/.vimrc

if has("gui_running")
  syntax on
  set hlsearch
  colorscheme macvim
  set bs=2
  set ai
  set ruler
endif
sumx
  • 618
7

Where does macvim keep it's themes?

The themes that MacVim ships with can be found in 

/Applications/MacVim.app/Contents/Resources/vim/runtime/colors

but MacVim will also load any custom themes you have on disk. I use the rather awesome Janus plugin distribution with MacVim and Janus keeps all of its themes in ~/.vim/janus/vim/colors. MacVim will load this in as well as the defaults.

But the theme remains unchanged. What am I doing wrong?

MacVim loads both ~/.vimrc and ~/.gvimrc, in that order. Make sure that settings in ~/.gvimrc aren't clobbering settings you're making in your ~/.vimrc file.

Greg
  • 1,151
Ian C.
  • 45,969
  • I have my colorscheme files in ~/.vim/colors but MacVim does not show them in the Syntax menu as Janus distribution does. Do you know which could be the problem? I installed MacVim via brew command. – alexventuraio Oct 08 '20 at 03:55
0

The easiest way is to create a ~/.gvimrc file and add 

colorscheme solarized

or whatever colorscheme you want. That's all I had to do to get my brewed version of macvim working again. I had a conditional like the one at the top of the thread and that worked for sometime, but recently ( I think after an upgrade to OSX ) I had to add the .gvimrc file to get OceanicNext to work.

pixel 67
  • 109