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I am configuring macvim on Mac OS X Mavericks. I type "set guifont=Menlo\ 14" in both ~/.vimrc and ~/.gvimrc but the editor remains displaying in courier.

I insert ":set guifont?" and it reveals "guifont=Menlo\ 14". I overviewed the content of .vimrc and .gvimrc but found no other line overriding the guifont setting.

I have checked several posts in stack overflow but cannot yet find the solution. Wish to get some help, thanks for anticipation.

Zelong
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  • I get an invalid font when I try this. Have you looked at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17508542/how-to-set-the-default-font-size-on-vim/17508781#17508781? Almost everything that I say there is applicable here. – FDinoff Apr 24 '14 at 03:49
  • Thank you. I just figured it out. I guess the syntaxes of setting font are a little bit various among different platform. I set the font through menu and check the syntax with ":set guifont?", then I found the correct form. Your answer is also helpful for me. Thank you. – Zelong Apr 24 '14 at 03:53
  • @Zack, for future reference, what was the correct syntax, and how did it differ from your original attempt? – Simon MᶜKenzie Apr 24 '14 at 03:57
  • @SimonMᶜKenzie On my Macvim, the syntax is: Menlo\ Regular:h14" while it may vary on other version (which I am not so sure). I think the better approach is Dhruva Sagar's answer, using "set guifont=*". – Zelong Apr 25 '14 at 05:18

3 Answers3

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The ideal way of going about doing this is by invoking the following command from vim :

set guifont=*

That will open a font selection dialog box and you can select whatever you would like there. Once done, you should then check what the option was set to by using the command you mentioned yourself :

set guifont?

Now you should put the output of that in your .gvimrc (not .vimrc) and additionally you'll need to escape the spaces like you're doing already. There might be subtle mistakes in what you're setting yourself, the font size for instance can sometimes be set in different ways.

Dhruva Sagar
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1

On my version of MacVim (7.4.258) and running EL Kapitan, putting

set guifont=*

in .vimrc caused MacVim to spit out the following error (when run from the command line, starting it from the Dock caused it to just not run at all):

E665: Cannot start GUI, no valid font found

So it seems the correct way is to start MacVim, use the Edit > Font > Show Font menu, pick a font, then use

set guifont?

to find the line to add to your .vimrc

Also remember to use forward slashes to escape any spaces in the font name.

Kieran O'Neill
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To change font, use Edit -> Font -> Show Fonts and selected a font.

Unfortunately this setting gets wiped out with each update of MacVim.

To have your font setting persisted in MacVim add this to your ~/.gvimrc

set guifont=Hack\ Nerd\ Font:h12
David Ding
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