Turn on or off color syntax highlighting in vi or vim

by nixCraft on October 30, 2006 · 46 comments· last updated at May 12, 2008

Q. How do I turn on or off color syntax highlighting in vi or vim text editor under UNIX or Linux?

A. Vim or vi is a text editor. It can be used to edit all kinds of plain text. It is especially useful for editing programs or UNIX/Linux configuration files.

Task: Turn on color syntax highlighting

Open file (for example file.c):
$ vi file.c

Now press ESC key, type : syntax on
:syntax on

Task: Turn off color syntax highlighting

To turn it back off, press ESC key, type : syntax off
:syntax off

You can edit ~/.vimrc file and add command syntax on to it so that next you will start vim with color syntax highlighting option
$ cd $ vi .vimrc
Append the following line:
syntax on
Save and close the file.

C source code editing while syntax highlighting is on in vi or vim:
Turn on or off color syntax highlighting in vi or vim

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{ 46 comments… read them below or add one }

1 trojan March 10, 2007 at 1:22 pm

Hey this Syntax-highlighting works!!
Looks cool
Thanks.

2 yoander May 12, 2008 at 2:16 pm

In vim editor you can use syntax enable too.

Inside vim in command mode press shift : and write syntax press space and press tab and vim go through out different syntax command

3 Bobby June 10, 2008 at 5:51 pm

I believe that the exact syntax is “set syntax=on”. At least that is how it works for mine.

4 Satya Prakash March 3, 2011 at 10:56 am: To me as well. set syntax=on is working and not just syntax=on
Reply

5 Garratt November 13, 2008 at 8:51 am

@ Bobby, while it may work, I’m guessing you have an extra command after typing vim filename, that is because it’s asking for extra info…and can be avoided by hitting enter the correct way is:

set ts=4
set sw=4
set spell
set spl=en
syntax on
set wrap
set ai

etc….

6 Khader December 23, 2008 at 10:40 pm

All of the obove suggestions may not work since on most flavors of linux vi is pointing to vim. unalias vi.
$ which vi
vi=vim
$ unalias vi
$ which vi
/bin/vi

7 Steve February 28, 2009 at 5:48 am

FINALLY I got syntax highlighting turned on. I had no idea how to do it. It wasn’t in the man page at all or anywhere else I had looked online until I found it here. Thanks!

8 rob March 11, 2009 at 3:50 pm

For Ubuntu, you probably have the package “vim-tiny” installed by default.
To check this run:
dpkg -l vim*

So install the real vim with:
sudo apt-get install vim
or
sudo apt-get install vim-full

On Debian Etch I originally just had vim-tiny, but I now have:

svn@svn:infrastructure$ dpkg -l vim*

Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-installed
|/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name                   Version                Description
+++-======================-======================-============================================================
ii  vim                    7.0-122+1etch3         Vi IMproved - enhanced vi editor
ii  vim-common             7.0-122+1etch3         Vi IMproved - Common files
un  vim-doc                                 (no description available)
un  vim-full                                (no description available)
un  vim-gnome                               (no description available)
un  vim-gtk                                 (no description available)
un  vim-lesstif                             (no description available)
un  vim-perl                                (no description available)
un  vim-python                              (no description available)
un  vim-ruby                                (no description available)
ii  vim-runtime            7.0-122+1etch3         Vi IMproved - Runtime files
un  vim-scripts                             (no description available)
un  vim-tcl                                 (no description available)
ii  vim-tiny               7.0-122+1etch3         Vi IMproved - enhanced vi editor - compact version

9 Narendra March 12, 2009 at 8:29 pm

Hey Vivek,

Thanks:) it’s working!!!!!!

10 saritha April 3, 2009 at 8:53 am

I am using fedora 5.My editor is VIM 6.4.7.I wanted to highlight keywords of my C program.I tried adding “syntax on” to your $HOME/.vimrc file which is copied from /usr/share/vim/vim64/gvimrc.examples…

and I tried the above mentioned tips also….pls help

11 Senthil April 13, 2009 at 7:04 am

Hi,

This doesn’t work in vi. any idea why? i don’t use vim and is there any setup required to use vim?

Thanks,
Senthil

12 Daniel Brockman March 2, 2011 at 7:19 pm: @Senthil
:syntax on and :syntax off don’t work in vi. They are features of vim. vi is ancient, emerging from work by George Colouris and Bill Joy circa 1973 to 1979. It had no color and no understanding of syntax at all. This was an epoch before color was available on computers (except for government supercomputers used to track incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles, perhaps). Vim arrived much later, the first versions appearing in the early 1990s.
Ref: http://www.softpanorama.org/Editors/Vimorama/history.shtml
Reply

13 Zuquirio Ámaur April 17, 2009 at 4:13 am

Thanks, this works for me on ubuntu 8.10

14 Arturo April 19, 2009 at 3:16 pm

It’s great! Thanks.

15 andy September 18, 2009 at 10:24 pm

I am using Vim on fedora.. How do you turn off yellow highlight between space (text) in vim file?

what command turn off yellow highlight?

16 Anonymous August 9, 2011 at 9:01 pm

use:
:noh
to turn it off

17 dave bratton February 29, 2012 at 7:40 pm: This worked for me
Reply
18 Priya April 11, 2012 at 2:56 pm: This worked for me. Thanks a ton. Saved a lot of my time.
Reply

19 Titus September 24, 2009 at 5:46 pm

I turned off the colorization. Whew. Now I would like to get rid of the highlighted
matching braces. When I put the cursor on an open curley brace it highlights that
brace and the matching closing brace. Rescue me!

Titus sends

20 sumit September 25, 2009 at 9:19 am

Even I had searched online a lot before but nothing worked..thankfully I landed here today and it finally worked..:) Thanks

21 Ben January 1, 2010 at 11:35 pm

Hey. If you are using a dark background for your terminal you may want to
” set background=dark “

22 Bubnoff February 9, 2010 at 7:47 pm

‘syn on/syn off’, instead of typing ‘syntax’, works as well in vim.

Imagine what your boss would think if he/she found out you were getting paid while typing
those three extra letters!!!

Bubnoff

23 Imran May 25, 2010 at 12:30 pm

I got syntax highlighting turned on on linux VI editor. Thanks!

24 shijitht August 5, 2010 at 12:47 pm

add a file name .exrc in home dir
set cindent ” for c indentation(correct spacing)
syntax on ” coloring according to c syntax
set nu ” line numbers

25 dilu August 6, 2010 at 7:09 pm

thanks all,,,,,, i was using vi in cygwin and syntax on worked…….. lol……….

26 Manoj September 9, 2010 at 4:28 am

hi,
I am using fedora 13.I wanted to highlight keywords of my C program, i tried all the above told but i am still unable..pls help me out,I am new to linux

27 George January 16, 2011 at 5:04 am

What kind of idiot decided that we need syntax highlight ?

28 Daniel Brockman January 28, 2011 at 12:54 am: I’m very glad to have found this blog and to have learned to use syntax off. Those colors were a profound interference for me.
Reply
29 Erik August 22, 2012 at 5:51 am: Indeed. Thank you.
Some completely other kind of idiot than me, apparently.
Reply

30 Dave January 18, 2011 at 10:25 pm

Thanks! Worked well.

Syntax highlighting is a huge benefit to me. It makes commented and uncommented lines different colors in config files. Much easier for finding which options are enabled.

31 Daniel Brockman March 2, 2011 at 7:23 pm: I’m colorblind, and the syntax highlighting just makes the code hard to read.
I hope the next version of VIM lets me specify what color I want for background and what color I want for foreground instead of requiring me to choose from their predefined templates.
Hey! Maybe VIM already lets me specify bg and fg colors! Does anyone know the syntax for the command?
Reply

32 Ahamed ishak January 19, 2011 at 6:25 pm

I try. but i didn’t got it. its not working in my Linux OS.
I use Fedora 14.
Plz give me a help to solve this problem

33 Gobikrishnan January 31, 2011 at 6:30 pm: 1st checkl you have installed vim by connanding
yum install vim-enhanced
if you got message like “already installed and latest version
Nothing to do”
if not install it ,
then open your .c/ .cpp file and command
:set syntax=on
Reply

34 johan March 1, 2011 at 10:47 pm

Thank you very much very helpful.

35 Rajasekhar July 12, 2011 at 9:00 am

Its working Nice..!! Thank you..!!

36 Indie July 14, 2011 at 4:36 pm

If you use sudoedit to edit a file, vim won’t be able to determine what syntax to apply so you need to also do

:set syn=php

37 Ginso July 25, 2011 at 9:43 pm

hi, when i open a new .tex document, i have a different syntax than, when i open an already existing .tex document. I like the first one better, but typing :set syn=tex gives me the ugly one. Any ideas how i get the other one?

38 Sourav Chakraborty September 21, 2011 at 8:10 am

Thanks for the great tip!

39 Diwanker Pandey September 21, 2011 at 10:38 am

how to compile c program in fedora 15?

Can anybody help?????

40 Theresa July 20, 2012 at 6:14 pm

Hooray! Thanks, Rob who commented in 2009. I had syntax on and had adjusted the color settings, from 8 colors to 256, but the final key was to kill vim-tiny. Running Ubuntu and had installed vim-full but I was still apparently using vim-tiny. Just ‘sudo apt-get remove vim-tiny’ed. This post helped me with color settings http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3761770/iterm-vim-colorscheme-not-working

41 Abi August 24, 2012 at 10:03 am

Thanks. The syntax highlighting finally works for me when I type :syntax on.
I use Vim Editor in Cygwin. 1.7.16-1(Latest version). But I am unable to make it default. I tried editing the $vi .vimrc. It just doesn’t work. Help would be appreciated.

42 Mark November 1, 2012 at 2:34 pm

One other piece of this puzzle, for those who are using the correct syntax to turn highlighting on, but are still not getting color: you might need to tell vim what syntax highlighting to use. It can’t always figure out the correct one.
For example, when editing a config file in vim, type
:set syntax=sh
That sets it to “shell script” highlighting. The syntax highlighting configs available are: c perl java html cpp sh csh
so if you’re editing a perl file, you’d type :set syntax=perl

43 praveen November 23, 2012 at 7:11 pm

hey..i m getting syntax comman not found

44 Simon December 12, 2012 at 2:07 am

Cool. Good to know. Thanks.

45 UncaAlby January 15, 2013 at 6:32 pm

I’m happy to turn the syntax highlighting OFF

It gets confusing with all the damn colors. I can never tell where the cursor is!

Now I need to turn off the colors that highlights EVERY DAMN MATCH when you search for text! Then that STAYS ON when you exit and return later.

Look, that’s a nice feature, but it deserves its own distinct command. Usually when I’m searching for something, I only want the NEXT one. And again, it makes it difficult to find the cursor, so I always end up making changes in the wrong place.

46 Splendid Bill May 22, 2013 at 3:32 pm

To turn off highlighting :noh
If anyone is still not getting colour or getting shades of grey (I was using securecrt) the doing :set term=ansi before :syntax on gave me colours. (Sinclair ZX Spectrum colours lol )

Turn on or off color syntax highlighting in vi or vim

Task: Turn on color syntax highlighting

Task: Turn off color syntax highlighting

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