>_VIMCOLORSCHEMES
One bundle. Every scheme. 732 hand-curated Vim colorschemes packaged as a single plugin. Every file in colors/ is a working :colorscheme target the moment the bundle is on runtimepath — no per-scheme installs, no plugin-manager churn. Drop it into Pathogen, vim-plug, a native Vim 8 package, or lazy.nvim; pick a scheme; move on. Works in terminal Vim (256-color + truecolor), GUI Vim, and Neovim.
Install
# Pathogen (canonical)
cd "$HOME/.vim/bundle" \
&& git clone https://github.com/MenkeTechnologies/VimColorSchemes.git
# vim-plug (in your .vimrc)
" Plug 'MenkeTechnologies/VimColorSchemes'
# Native Vim 8 packages
git clone https://github.com/MenkeTechnologies/VimColorSchemes.git \
~/.vim/pack/menketech/start/VimColorSchemes
# Neovim (lazy.nvim)
" { 'MenkeTechnologies/VimColorSchemes', lazy = false, priority = 1000 }
No build step, no autoload, no compiled artifacts — the bundle is pure colors/*.vim highlight files. Once the directory is on runtimepath, every scheme is selectable.
Usage
After install, select any scheme by its filename stem:
:colorscheme gruvbox :colorscheme onedark :colorscheme molokai :colorscheme solarized :colorscheme PaperColor :colorscheme menketechnologies
To tab-complete the list, type :colorscheme and press Tab — every scheme that declares g:colors_name shows up in completion. Set the background hint first when a scheme has both modes:
:set background=dark :colorscheme PaperColor :set background=light :colorscheme PaperColor
What is inside
732 distinct .vim decks, totaling 125,715 lines (~6.3 MB). The collection mixes ports of community classics with niche / artistic / one-off palettes:
| Classics | ports / forks of gruvbox, solarized, molokai, jellybeans, onedark, zenburn, wombat, railscasts, PaperColor |
| base16 family | 11 base16-* schemes (the Atelier set + railscasts) |
| duotone family | 12 duotone-* schemes (cave / desert / earth / forest / lake / sea / space / …) |
| colorsbox family | 7 colorsbox-* schemes (faff / greenish / material / stblue / stbright / steighties / stnight) |
| Tomorrow family | 5 Tomorrow* schemes (Night / Night-Blue / Night-Bright / Night-Eighties + base) |
| MenkeTechnologies-authored | menketechnologies, menketech-cyberpunk, and 7 zpwr* recolors (zpwrelise, zpwrelrond, zpwrguardian, zpwrmarklar, zpwrneverness, zpwrpride, zpwrsprinkles) |
657 schemes set GUI colors (guifg), 485 set 256-color terminal colors (ctermfg); 463 declare background=dark, 161 declare background=light (many declare both depending on &background).
Random scheme on launch
Cycle a random deck every time Vim starts:
" .vimrc function! RandomColorScheme() let schemes = split(globpath(&runtimepath, 'colors/*.vim'), '\n') let pick = schemes[localtime() % len(schemes)] exe 'colorscheme ' . fnamemodify(pick, ':t:r') endfunction autocmd VimEnter * call RandomColorScheme()
Or browse them with a fuzzy picker via fzf.vim:
nnoremap <silent> <Leader>c :Colors<CR>
Loader compatibility
| Pathogen | clone into ~/.vim/bundle/ — Pathogen adds it to runtimepath |
| vim-plug | Plug 'MenkeTechnologies/VimColorSchemes' |
| packer / lazy.nvim | any loader that honours runtimepath / :colorscheme <name> |
| Native Vim 8 packages | clone into ~/.vim/pack/<any>/start/ |
| Neovim | fully compatible — same colors/*.vim contract |
Bare :set rtp+= | point runtimepath at the clone directory; no manager required |
Troubleshooting
Scheme not in :colorscheme tab-complete | The file does not declare let g:colors_name (~38 vendored schemes pre-date the convention). Vim still loads it — type the full name; it just will not autocomplete. See the engineering report. |
| Colors look washed out / wrong in the terminal | Enable truecolor: set termguicolors for GUI palettes, or ensure a 256-color terminal ($TERM=*-256color) for the ctermfg schemes. |
| Light/dark variant not applying | Set :set background=dark (or light) before :colorscheme; many schemes branch on &background. |
| Scheme errors with E411 (highlight group not found) | That group is referenced by a plugin not loaded. It is non-fatal; the scheme still applies. The CI validator sources every scheme under try/catch for exactly this reason. |
| Want to confirm the bundle loaded | :echo split(globpath(&rtp, 'colors/*.vim'), "\n") -> len() should report the scheme count. |
Engineering report
For the full breakdown — exact scheme count, line/byte totals, family tallies, GUI-vs-terminal coverage, g:colors_name declaration audit, and the CI test matrix that pins all of it — see the engineering report.
Sibling projects
Part of the MenkeTechnologies stack — the MenkeTechnologiesMeta umbrella:
- zpwr — the full Zsh / terminal power environment
- zsh-more-completions — mega completion corpus
- zsh-learn — MySQL-backed snippet / quiz collection
- zsh-expand — spacebar expansion
- zsh-git-acp — git add/commit/push aliases + keybindings
- vim-pathogen — the canonical loader this bundle targets