I am having a strange issue with iTerm2, in terminal vim (non-gui) and the solarized color scheme. First, I have set iTerm2 to use the dark solarized colour scheme.
I am also using solarized for vim. I have the following lines in my .vimrc
set background=dark
colorscheme solarized
In the terminal the color scheme looks incorrect:
For reference this is how it looks under MacVim (gui vim)
What do I need to change in iTerm or my .vimrc to get the colors looking correctly in my console vim?
A couple of things to check:
In iTerm2, in Preferences -> Profiles -> Terminal, under "Terminal Emulation" you have "Report Terminal Type:" set to xterm-256color.
In your .vimrc, there are some options you can also set to make sure it's using 256 colors:
set background=dark
" solarized options
let g:solarized_visibility = "high"
let g:solarized_contrast = "high"
colorscheme solarized
BUT, if you're using the default, built in vim on Snow Leopard, it won't work, as it's not built with support for 256 colors. I believe the built in version in Lion does.
Edit: Based on several comments on this answer, I've removed let g:solarized_termcolors = 256 line from the .vimrc example above. It appears that could be a problem for some. Another says that adding the line let g:solarized_termcolors = 16 fixed a color display problem. Your own mileage may vary.
Second Edit: If you've loaded the solarized color palette into iTerm2, then you must let g:solarized_termcolors=16. Only let g:solarized_termcolors=256 if you are not using the solarized palette as your iTerm2 color preset.
The above answers didn't work for me.
I'm using iTerm2 with vim 7.3 on OS X 10.7.4.
If the above solutions didn't work for you too, try this
syntax on
set background=dark
let g:solarized_termtrans = 1
colorscheme solarized
Update: According to Jim Stewart, this works on Kitty too.
https://github.com/altercation/solarized/tree/master/iterm2-colors-solarized
Download Solarized package (https://github.com/altercation/solarized) and follow instructions:
Open iTerm 2, open Preferences, click on the "Profiles" (formerly Addresses, formerly Bookmarks) icon in the preferences toolbar, then select the "colors" tab. Click on the "load presets" and select "import...". Select the Solarized Light or Dark theme file.
You have now loaded the Solarized color presets into iTerm 2, but haven't yet applied them. To apply them, simply select an existing profile from the profile list window on the left, or create a new profile. Then select the Solarized Dark or Solarized Light preset from the "Load Presets" drop down.
====================================
Or:
cd ~/.vim/bundle
git clone git://github.com/altercation/vim-colors-solarized.git
Modify .vimrc
Dark Theme:
syntax enable
set background=dark
colorscheme solarized
Light
syntax enable
set background=light
colorscheme solarized
This worked for me in OS X 10.9.1 in iTerm 2 as well as Terminal. One mistake I was making was putting the colorscheme declaration before the termtrans and termcolors settings (and I needed both of these to make it work). As others have said, I set my terminal type to xterm-256color
if !has("gui_running")
let g:solarized_termtrans=1
let g:solarized_termcolors=256
endif
colorscheme solarized
set background=dark
From the creator: http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized/vim-colors-solarized
IMPORTANT NOTE FOR TERMINAL USERS:
If you are going to use Solarized in Terminal mode (i.e. not in a GUI version like gvim or macvim), please please please consider setting your terminal emulator’s colorscheme to used the Solarized palette. I’ve included palettes for some popular terminal emulator as well as Xdefaults in the official Solarized download available from Solarized homepage. If you use Solarized without these colors, Solarized will need to be told to degrade its colorscheme to a set compatible with the limited 256 terminal palette (whereas by using the terminal’s 16 ansi color values, you can set the correct, specific values for the Solarized palette).
If you do use the custom terminal colors, solarized.vim should work out of the box for you. If you are using a terminal emulator that supports 256 colors and don’t want to use the custom Solarized terminal colors, you will need to use the degraded 256 colorscheme. To do so, simply add the following line before the colorschem solarized line:
let g:solarized_termcolors=256
Again, I recommend just changing your terminal colors to Solarized values either manually or via one of the many terminal schemes available for import.
Bill Turner's answer works, but there is a way to get the colors to match MacVim exactly. Solarized has support specifically for iTerm2, among other terminal emulators.
colorscheme solarizedThis should set the vim colors in iTerm2 to be exactly as they are in gui editors.
For any still having issues like I was, I had installed iterm2 solarized color profile. Installing vim-color-solarized to vim bundles and following the instructions was unnecessary and was incompatible. There were funny highlighting issues like in the screen capture above.
Lesson learned: don't do both.
