hi.nvim.rs

(Neo)vim perceptual color scheme compiler

Create (Neo)vim color schemes by defining colors and their transformations. This uses the Oklab color space to make the perceptual effects of transformations predictable.

A hosted version is available here.

Feature summary

• Color schemes are compiled to (Neo)vim configurations with no startup overhead
• Specify colors using lightness, chromacity and hue in the Oklch color space
• If you're creating a dark theme, you get the inverse light theme for free, and vice versa
• A curated set of opinionated default Neovim highlight groups is provided, requiring only a few theme definitions to get a consistent color scheme
• Theme colors definitions refer to colors with optional transformations (such as lightness and chromacity)
• Override or add any highlight group
• Vim is supported as a secondary target

Examples

Light	Dark

highlow: a color scheme with high contrast between background and foreground, low color saturation, and low contrast between foreground elements.

Light	Dark

verf: a colorful color scheme.

Light	Dark

twocolor: a color scheme using (mostly) just two hues.

Light	Dark

grayscale: a color scheme, sans color.

These screenshots were generated using Termsnap.

Getting started

To run the CLI version, run

$ cargo install hi-nvim-rs
$ hi-nvim-rs --help
$ hi-nvim-rs ./path/to/colorscheme.toml > ~/.config/nvim/colors/a-colorscheme-name.vim

Color scheme configurations

In hi.nvim.rs color scheme configurations, you define the hues you want to use in your color scheme, as well as the default lightness and chromacity of various color groups (background and foreground colors, for example). You then derive the desired theme elements of your color scheme by referring to these hues with optional color transformations: lightening/darkening, saturating/desaturating and color mixing. Neovim highlight group colors refer to these theme elements. One theme element can be common to various highlight groups, such as various types of seperators in Neovim referring to a single ui.bg_border theme element.

See highlow for a color scheme configuration with an inline explanation of the various configuration settings.

Default highlight groups

hi.nvim.rs provides opinionated default highlight groups for Neovim and some plugins. These are defined in default_highlights.toml. When creating your color schemes you can choose to base your configuration on these defaults, optionally overriding some of them, or you can completely ignore them. If you use them, make sure you define all the theme elements referenced by the default highlights. A good starting point is to take a look at the [themes] section in highlow.