Why does .vimrc not set colorscheme properly?

Question

So I have downloaded proton.vim (a colorscheme) and placed it inside my .vim/colors folder.

In .vimrc, right at the bottom I have

colorscheme proton

but when Vim loads, it is set to the default colorscheme. If I type

:colorscheme proton

after it has loaded, it works fine though. Anyone know what else I need to do to persist this colorscheme?

I don't know if it will help you, but if proton is a colorscheme for the gui version of Vim, you could try creating a .gvimrc file, and write the line colorscheme proton at the end of it. — saginaw, Mar 13 '16 at 11:29
Or perhaps there already is a gvimrc file that overrides this (this file is only loaded when using Gvim). Otherwise you can try following the steps here and/or posting your full vimrc file — Martin Tournoij, Mar 13 '16 at 12:04

score 5 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:38

Try this to help troubleshoot the issue:

Check the location where you have downloaded the color proton.vim file.

On Linux, the system default will be something like /usr/share/vim/vim74/colors/

On MSWindows, the system default will be something like C:\Program Files (x86)\Vim\vim74\colors\

You could also try setting up a home directory for colors: $HOME/.vim/colors on Linux, or $HOME/vimfiles/colors on MSWindows.
See if the color scheme shows up outside of your ~/.vimrc

Restart vim, then per this StackOverflow post, type

:colorscheme then Space followed by CTRLd

This should list your colorscheme along with all other color schemes.

Note: CTRLd returns one list which shows all color schemes.

If you use :colorscheme then Space followed by TAB you will iterate over the list of color schemes, one at a time, each time you press TAB

You can also see this behaviour if you use :colorscheme then Space followed by CTRLi ; you will iterate over the list of color schemes, one at a time, each time you press CTRLi

When I troubleshoot an issue like this, I prefer CTRLd so I may see the entire list at once.

type

:let colors_name

to return the name of the current colorscheme in use by vim
If you've added it to ~/.vimrc

to confirm which .vimrc file is being loaded by vim, type

:scriptnames

This will show you the path to the .vimrc, the path to the current colorscheme loaded, and all scripts sourced so far.

This file will be ~\_vimrc on MSWindows.

You've used control-d (to get the list of colorschemes) where I've always used tab. Is there a difference? (:h for control-d just witters on pointlessly about scrolling downwards). — , May 09 '16 at 08:21

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 08 '16 at 18:12

1

Check whether the color scheme's name is mentioned properly, for case sensitivity. Also, check whether

let colors_name = "name"

is found or not. If not, add this line and try again.

edited Apr 08 '16 at 18:12

muru

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answered Apr 08 '16 at 16:43

SibiCoder

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Thanks, this helped for me. It somehow worked inside screen without this though. – wastl Mar 12 '20 at 13:35

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 02 '19 at 07:51

0

I had this problem when the colorscheme name (as in let g:colors_name = "selenized" inside colorscheme file) contained uppercase letters. Changing it to lowercase fixed the problem.

answered Nov 02 '19 at 07:51

Jan Warchoł

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Why does .vimrc not set colorscheme properly?

3 Answers3