Vim Powershell Colorscheme

How to setup your VIM in Powershell so you can edit Python code.

I was looking to code some Python in Windows 10. The default colorscheme that appears in VIM in Powershell is all blue. I am documenting the setup and which color scheme looks good for Python programming on Windows 10 in this post.

Step 1 Make sure VIM is in your PATH

Make sure you can run vim.exe from powershell terminal. To do this simply type vim.exe and hit return.

If you are not taken into vim, you will have to update your PATH. In the search bar type env and windows will suggest “Edit the system environment variables” click on this. In the window that pops up, click the grey Environment Variables button. Scroll down in the System variables on the bottom till you find Path. Select this and edit it. Add a new entry that points to where your vim.exe is. Finally, click OK then Apply.

Step 2 See which colorthemes are available

To see which themes are available in your vim installation, simply start of vim.exe. Next type

:colorscheme ctrl-D

To try out a theme named industry type

:colorscheme industry

then hit return. Once you find a theme you like, it is time to add it to your vimrc file.

Step 3 Create a VIM RC file

You will need to create a file called _vimrc in your user directory.
For me that this was

C:\Users\start

Inside this _vimrc file I added the following lines:

colorscheme industry
syntax on

Step 4 Test out your colorscheme

On the command line run vim.exe foo.py Then start typing in some Python code to see your new color scheme and the syntax highlighting.