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Installed MacVim on my Yosemite 10.10.2 Macbook Pro today from http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/25988/macvim

The problem is that no editor window(s) are visible. If I open a file using the menu, there's simply no effect: no editor window appears. It's not hidden behind other windows, it's not listed in the Windows menu, it's just entirely undisplayed.

Strangely, the file will appear in the MRU list, though. So this renders the entire editor completely useless. Should I just build gvim myself? Is this app actually being maintained by anyone?

Stabledog
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6 Answers6

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I'd read some answers which suggest running:

brew install macvim

... does the trick.

You might want to try that first.

What worked for me...

However, this didn't work for me because although it updated my macvim, the one being linked to in the /Applications folder was not the version being updated by brew.

So, here are the steps I had to take.

  1. Quit MacVim if open.
  2. Delete the MacVim file in /Applications.

  3. In the terminal, run:

    brew install macvim --override-system-vim

  4. Run (this will add the link to your Applications file):

    brew linkapps macvim

I can't be sure every step above is required, or that the --override-system-vim flag is required, but I can tell you that doing the above steps worked for me.

Hope this helps.

greggannicott
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  • @Stabledog: out of interest, which bit worked for you? The first bit, or the bits that worked for me? – greggannicott Jun 11 '15 at 19:47
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    The problem I had with brew at first was that I didn't have Xcode installed, and the Apple Store wouldn't tolerate my 5-year-old AppleID, and wouldn't let me reuse my email addr, etc. Just the typical everything-depends-on-everything-else modern techno-tangle. :) – Stabledog Jul 07 '15 at 04:48
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It looks like MacVim development has been moved to a new repository (and maybe a different group of developers?):

https://github.com/macvim-dev/macvim

This repo has had changes applied to fix MacVim's graphical problems under Yosemite. (This is the same location that brew's macvim formula currently pulls its source from, which is why MacVim works on Yosemite when installed via brew.)

They also have a set of precompiled binary releases:

https://github.com/macvim-dev/macvim/releases

The latest ("snapshot 76") has worked fine for me in Yosemite so far. You just need to download the .tbz archive, double-click it to unpack to a folder, then drag the MacVim.app icon to Applications -- much easier and less invasive than installing a whole package management system and build environment! :)

Note: I had to execute a command given in another StackOverflow answer to correct a rendering glitch seen in full screen mode for snapshot 76:

$ defaults write org.vim.MacVim MMNativeFullScreen 0
Community
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jcl
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  • thanks. It solves my problem after OSX 10.10.4 upgrades. – Hai Feng Kao Jul 06 '15 at 10:14
  • I built it with homebrew before this answer showed up, and that worked -- but it required me to install Xcode. Not a problem, but a working/pre-cooked package would have been preferable. – Stabledog Jul 07 '15 at 04:46
  • The latest macvim-dev release [snapshot 77](https://github.com/macvim-dev/macvim/releases/tag/snapshot-77) fixes the full screen mode rendering glitch in OS X Yosemite. Brew install pulls the latest release (77). – cedricdlb Sep 08 '15 at 18:09
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I got the same problem today.

The solution:

mv ~/.vimrc ~/.vimrc_bak

It looks like there is something wrong with my .vimrc file.

Hai Feng Kao
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  • I got the same problem again. This time, the working solution is to install a newer version of MacVim (7.4 build 102) – Hai Feng Kao Jul 11 '16 at 13:34
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I was having the same issue, and one of the answers in here helped me, but not for the reason explained so I thought this might be useful for others.

Some plugins might depend on the version of vim, and may work in version 7 but not in version 8, when you install MacVim this could be version 8, and the terminal vim version might be 7, both will use the same .vim folder and .vimrc to load the plugins and configuration, when you open the vim from terminal it might still work because the plugins were depending on vim version 7, but when you try to execute MacVim it will try to load the plugins using version 8 and then it will crash, the reason some of the answers worked it's because they are replacing the system vim, therefore MacVim and vim will be in the same major version, if you have upgraded from the previous version the best you can do it's to clear up the plugins folder and then load MacVim or vim and check that everything is working, then start applying the plugins one by one checking that they are not breaking vim. At least with this method I found that one of the plugins was not working as expected and removing it solved the "MacVim" issue.

In summary: - move your .vim as .vim_bak - move your .vimrc as .vimrc_bak (suggested by @hai feng kao)

And test if this solves the issue, if that's the case then a plugin is breaking your installation and you will need to activate some and figure out which is the one that causes the issue.

Hope this helps to others, I've followed a lot of these recommendations without success until I decided to upgrade vim (terminal) and this started to break as well, that pointed me in the right direction.

Again hope this saves some hours for some.

Cross
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I had the same symptom with MacVim launching with no window and command-N doesn't start any a new one. brew re-install didn't help.

It turned out there was another instance of macvim installed on my system somehow, in the Downloads folder. I found out by clicking "MacVim" --> "About MacVim" and it was a version from 2014. I found the instance and deleted it.

I created an alias for the newly installed version and copied that into Applications folder so spotlight search can find the new one. That solved my problem.

Xun Wilson Huang
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I had this problem upon updating from MacOS 10.12.5 to 10.12.6.

I uninstalled MacVim by moving it to the trashcan and downloading it again.

I would guess that the new version fixed whatever issue it had with the new operating system.

Be Kind To New Users
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