How to tell which colorscheme a Vim session currently uses

Question

You can set the Vim color scheme by issuing

:colorscheme SCHEME_NAME

but, oddly enough, you can't get the currently used scheme by issuing

:colorscheme

as this results in "E471: Argument required". I also don't see the color scheme listed in the output of :set.

So how do you go about figuring out the current color scheme in use (other than manually switching the themes until you recognize it)?

DrAl · Accepted Answer · 2020-12-03T11:04:49.790

177

There's no guaranteed way (as a colour scheme is essentially a load of vim commands that are sourced). However, by convention there should be a variable g:colors_name that is set to the name of the colour scheme.

Therefore, try this:

echo g:colors_name

If you get E121, it's either a poorly made colour scheme or it's the default one.

A shinier way of doing this is (for recent versions of vim):

function! ShowColourSchemeName()
    try
        echo g:colors_name
    catch /^Vim:E121/
        echo "default"
    endtry
endfunction

Then do:

:call ShowColourSchemeName()

If it says "default", do :colorscheme default and see if the colours change. If they do, you're using a malformed colour scheme and there's not a lot you can do about it other than manually switching themes until you recognise it.

The variable g:colors_name is documented here:

:help colorscheme

edited Dec 03 '20 at 11:04

answered Mar 10 '10 at 19:00

DrAl

70,428
10
106
108

1

The first time this function is run VIM drops and error. However, when I loaded :colorscheme default, it worked well because there IS colors/default.vim colorscheme. – piotao Oct 26 '20 at 19:53
how to do the same for neovim? – NeoZoom.lua Jun 09 '22 at 03:56
This error does not seem to be catchable. Vim just responds with an error and does not echo 'default' – Nierusek Apr 03 '23 at 11:08

score 42 · Answer 2 · edited Oct 07 '12 at 14:22

42

Best option is to use :colo or :colorscheme in current vim and the actual colorscheme text is shown. Please see,

:help colorscheme

for more details.

edited Oct 07 '12 at 14:22

none

11,793
9
51
87

answered Aug 28 '12 at 13:47

Gattoo

3,019
7
25
21

8

It doesn't work to me. It says `default`. And the color scheme I get when I execute `:colo default` it's another one. – David Gras Oct 07 '16 at 10:52

score 14 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 11 '17 at 08:40

14

A one-line version of DrAl's answer:

let current_scheme = get(g:, 'colors_name', 'default')

The get() function will fall back to 'default' if the variable has not yet been set.

answered Dec 11 '17 at 08:40

joeytwiddle

29,306
13
121
110

How to tell which colorscheme a Vim session currently uses

3 Answers3

Linked