Choose/switch your theme easily: nvim-base16

The first thing you do to feel yourself home with your preferred applications is to theme them. The issue with choosing the right theme is that it can quickly becomes tedious to test one theme after the other. It would be nice to have a list of themes from which you can choose from and apply a given theme in a single command. That’s what nvim-base16 is for in neovim.

At time of writing, nvim-base16 allows you to choose from 232 themes. Yes, two hundreds and thirty two !!! To temporary apply a theme and see if you like it, simply type : colorscheme base16 and hit Tab. The gigantic list of theme will popup, you choose one, and click Enter. Don’t like it? Retype the command and choose another theme.
Once, you find the perfect theme for you, guess what? Add the line colorscheme *theme_name* in your vimrc or vim.cmd [[ colorscheme *theme_name* ]] in your init.lua file and the theme will be applied automatically on startup.

As often, here is the bonus tips section.

• To change your highlights, add this:

in vimrc

hi highlight_name guifg=#E69138 # if you use a console version of (neo)vim with set notermguicolors
hi highlight_name ctermfg=#E69138 # if you use (neo)vim in console with set termguicolors and the console is capable of TrueColor

in init.lua

vim.api.nvim_set_hl( 0, "highlight_name", { fg = "#a07bcc", italic=true } )

You can retrieve the highlight_name by looking at :help highlight-groups

• To create a full transparent (neo)vim with no plugin:

in vimrc

hi Normal bg=none
hi NormalFloat bg=none
hi NormalNC bg=none
hi LineNr bg=none
hi SignColumn bg=none
hi FoldColumn bg=none

As in the previous code, replace bg with ctermbg or guibg depending on your config.

in init.lua

vim.api.nvim_set_hl( 0, "Normal", { bg = "none" } )
vim.api.nvim_set_hl( 0, "NormalFloat", { bg = "none" } )
vim.api.nvim_set_hl( 0, "NormalNC", { bg = "none" } )
vim.api.nvim_set_hl( 0, "LineNr", { bg = "none" } )
vim.api.nvim_set_hl( 0, "SignColumn", { bg = "none" } )
vim.api.nvim_set_hl( 0, "FoldColumn", { bg = "none" } )