Transform Your Vim Experience: Master Syntax Highlighting and Color Schemes

When using powerful IDEs, syntax elements are highlighted with distinct colors, making code easier to read. Vim, by default, shows plain black‑on‑white text, but it hides many useful features for customizing syntax highlighting.

First, ensure Vim is installed (Ubuntu includes it by default). If not, install it:

$ sudo apt-get install vim

Check the installed version:

$ vim -version

Create a sample login.sh Bash script to demonstrate editing:

#!/bin/bash

echo "Type your username"
read username
echo "Type your password"
read password

if [[ ($username == "admin" && $password == "secret") ]]; then
  echo "Authorized user"
else
  echo "Unauthorized user"
fi

Open the file with Vim:

$ vim login.sh

Enable/Disable Syntax Highlighting

Some distributions enable syntax highlighting by default; if not, press ESC and type :syntax on to enable it:

:syntax on

To turn it off, press ESC and type :syntax off:

:syntax off

Permanent Enable/Disable Syntax Highlighting

Temporary toggles disappear when the file is closed. To make the setting permanent, edit .vimrc:

$ sudo vim ~/.vimrc

Add syntax on (or syntax off) and save with :wq:

syntax on
:wq

Change Color Scheme

Vim ships with many color schemes located in /usr/share/vim/vim*/colors/. List them with:

$ ls -l /usr/share/vim/vim*/colors/

To apply a scheme temporarily, open a file, press ESC and type :colorscheme morning:

:colorscheme morning

The change is temporary; closing Vim resets it.

To make a scheme permanent, edit .vimrc and add, for example, a night scheme:

color evening
set background=dark

Reopen the file to see the new appearance:

Choose Color Scheme by Language

Vim supports syntax for many languages (PHP, Perl, Python, etc.). To view a file with a different language’s highlighting, use :set syntax=perl (or another language):

:set syntax=perl

Custom Color Scheme

Vim defines nine highlight groups (Identifier, Statement, Comment, Type, PreProc, Constant, Special, Underlined, Error). You can change their colors with :hi commands. For example, to make statements red:

:hi Statement ctermfg=red

Similarly, you can adjust colors for comments, constants, types, etc., to create a personalized color scheme.