Highlight search terms in vim

Updated: November 19th, 2020

By default, vim does not highlight search terms, and it can be difficult to find them in the document.

h/vim • 23 guides

While editing a file in vim you can temporarily turn on the highlight search option by typing:

:set hlsearch

To automatically highlight search patterns in vim, first edit your .vimrc file:

vim ~/.vimrc

and then add this line:

set hlsearch

Highlight search patterns while the document is open