indentLine is a Vim plugin that visually displays indentation levels using thin vertical lines while editing code. It relies on Vim 7.3+'s conceal feature to render lines for spaces-based indentation only. This plugin takes advantage of the newly provided conceal feature in Vim 7.3, so this plugin will not work with lower versions of Vim. To apply customization, apply the variable definitions to your .vimrc file. This plugin enables the Vim conceal feature which automatically hides stretches of text based on syntax highlighting. This setting will apply to all syntax items. Even though this plugin requires conceal to be enabled for it to work, it is possible to disable conceal for JSON and Markdown files and still get the indentLine plugin to show indent lines for those files.
Features
- Renders thin, customizable vertical lines at each indentation level
- Leverages Vim’s conceal feature for clean integration; Vim must support conceal
- Users can adjust line character, color, background, and conceal level through settings like g:indentLine_char, g:indentLine_defaultGroup, g:indentLine_color_term, etc.
- Supports configuration variables to enable/disable, toggle, or visually customize indent lines
- Compatible with Vim 7.3+; macOS default Vim may require custom build for conceal feature support
- MIT‑licensed, allowing free customization and reuse