Zenbones is a light vim/neovim colorscheme designed to highlight code using contrasts and font variations. Colors are tasked only for other roles such as diagnostics, diffs, search matches.

A rock garden in Ryōan-ji.

Requirements

Primarily built for neovim but it works pretty well with vim. However here are some requirements to take full advantage of the colorscheme:

24-bit RGB colors (neovim or vim compiled with +termguicolors) i.e. set termguicolors
Font with bold and italic
Terminal or GUI with bold and italic support

Installation

Example installation using packer:

use "mcchrish/zenbones.nvim"

-- Optionally install Lush. Useful if you want to extend the theme
-- e.g. create a statusline plugin theme using zenbones colors
use "rktjmp/lush.nvim"
-- See Advanced Usage section for more details

Usage

Just apply the colorscheme as usual:

colorscheme zenbones

If you want to make use of the lua version:

" Requires `neovim` and `rktjmp/lush.nvim` installed
colorscheme zenbones-lush

It works pretty much the same as the first one but pretty handy when extending or customizing the colors to your likings.

Configuration

Configuration is only available for zenbones-lush.

g:zenbones_lightness

Change background colors lightness.

'bright'

Default (unset)

'dim'

g:zenbones_solid_vert_split

Set to v:true to make vertical split more visible with a dimmer background highlight.

g:zenbones_dim_noncurrent_window

Set to v:true to make non-current window background dimmer than Normal.

g:zenbones_italic_comments

Set to v:false to make comments not italicize.

Advanced Usage

Zenbones is pretty extensible thanks to Lush. You can easily retrieve the colors in lua:

local theme = require "zenbones"
local palette = require "zenbones.palette"

print(theme.StatusLine.bg.hex)
print(palette.sand.darken(20).hex)

See also Lush's documentation for more options.

Other plugins support

Aside from LSP and basic Tree-sitter support, here are some plugins that are currently supported.

Other implementations

It's also possible to generate color configuration files using a template, this one for Kitty for example. Please feel free to submit a PR if you want to add some more.

Showcase

Diff highlights

Search matches

LSP diagnostics

Font used is Iosevka Curly Slab.

Inspirations

Zenbones is heavily inspired by Verdandi and vim-yin-yang. The name came from a book called Zen Flesh, Zen Bones.

There are more similar colorschemes with few colors from this collection.