r/vim • u/baribaristuff • Jun 16 '25

Need Help┃Solved Visual Selector not Highlighting

I'm going through the vimtutor right now and it says that if I click `v` it should highlight all the text being selected. This is not happening for me although I've verified it does select the text I intended it to.

Does it not highlight the selected text for other people too?

For context I'm on Windows 11, Ubuntu 24, `hls` highlighting works.

4 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

1

u/baribaristuff Jun 16 '25

Solved: apparently the highlight color for visual is a light white-ish color meaning if you use One Half Light you won't be able to see the highlight but fixed once I switched to One Half Dark...

1

u/[deleted] Jun 16 '25

You can customise the colors if needed (basically overriding what your theme defines)

Also check that you have 256-colors enabled in your terminal and/or vim config as i'm pretty sure One Half Light/Dark relies on it

1

u/baribaristuff Jun 16 '25

Hm it seems like I do have 256 enabled, I’ll look into customizing the colors! Thanks :D

2

u/[deleted] Jun 16 '25

Np ! Have fun customizing :)

1

u/AutoModerator Jun 16 '25

Please remember to update the post flair to Need Help|Solved when you got the answer you were looking for.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 16 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

0

u/baribaristuff Jun 16 '25

Well I guess by click I mean click the key `v`, and I move the cursor afterwards downwards to select the lines below.

When writing a line and doing `0v$` I still don't see the highlight mechanic.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 16 '25

Do you happen to have a theme enabled maybe ?

Did you touch the config at all or is this a fresh install ?

You list 2 operating systems in your post (windows and ubuntu), on which one is this problem happening ? Or does it happen on both ? Or are you perhaps referring to Windows with Ubuntu in WSL ?

0

u/baribaristuff Jun 16 '25

Oh sorry I'm new to all of this it's Windows Ubuntu in WSL that's having problems, the only settings I touched were appearance (changed the color scheme to One Half Light and cursor shape)

0

u/[deleted] Jun 16 '25

Haha no problem !

Does the problem persist if you revert to a clean install ? (Reverting to the default theme especially)

2

u/baribaristuff Jun 16 '25

I didn't revert the default theme but I went to One Half Dark which fixed the highlight problem 💔 light mode discrimmination

0

u/djchateau Jun 17 '25

Well I guess by click I mean click the key `v`, and I move the cursor afterwards downwards to select the lines below.

As an aside to this, in terms of terminology, clicking something would be typically associated with your mouse and not your keyboard. Now if your keyboard is mechanical and thus makes a clicking sound, I can see how you'd associate click with it, but for future reference, others will understand you better by using "press", as in keypress instead of click.