使用 macOS Terminal.app 进入插入模式时，如何在 Vim 中更改光标形状？

Question

I want to change the cursor shape from an underscore to vertical when entering insert mode within VIM running in Terminal.app. (NOTE: I am aware that this is the default behavior under macvim.)

This reference: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Change_cursor_shape_in_different_modes provides instructions on how to do this. For example, the following works with iterm2:

let &t_SI = "\<Esc>]50;CursorShape=1\x7"
let &t_EI = "\<Esc>]50;CursorShape=0\x7"

Unfortunately, this does not work with Terminal.app (under Lion).

Are there any tricks for this with Terminal.app - or is this just not supported?

Answer 1

I'm absolutely certain I've seen an Applescript-based solution in the past but 5 minutes of google didn't bring anything. It was a little barbaric but it seemed to work… IIRC it changed the cursor shape preference on the fly and was triggered with an autocmd .

Keep searching, it's somewhere.

Are there any reason why you don't want to use iTerm?

Answer 2

I ran into this a similar problem myself, and found that this answer helped:

https://superuser.com/questions/712098/customize-vim-cursor-style-under-mac-os-x-terminal

When I started running vim inside tmux (still using terminal) the commands to change the cursor started working!

Tmux is a really cool terminal manager that lets you have multiple terminal windows, tabs, split-screens, you name it, as well as save your sessions. Heres a nice tutorial I used to get it installed and useful:

http://fideloper.com/mac-vim-tmux

Answer 3

OP asked this question in August 2012. It's very unlikely that Terminal.app supported the ability to change the cursor shape to a vertical bar at that time, because Terminal.app as a general rule provides very few features that are not imitating xterm. (The undocumented OSC 6 and 7 are the only exception to that rule which comes to mind).

xterm patch #282 about 6 weeks later introduced this feature as an extension to its emulation of DECSCUSR :

extend DECSCUSR to provide a way to set the cursor to a vertical bar (patch by Paul Bolle).

documented as follows:

CSI Ps SP q
          Set cursor style (DECSCUSR), VT520.
            Ps = 0  ⇒  blinking block.
            Ps = 1  ⇒  blinking block (default).
            Ps = 2  ⇒  steady block.
            Ps = 3  ⇒  blinking underline.
            Ps = 4  ⇒  steady underline.
            Ps = 5  ⇒  blinking bar, xterm.
            Ps = 6  ⇒  steady bar, xterm.

As indicated in a similar question ( Customize vim cursor style under Mac OS X Terminal , July 2017) you can set vim's variables to use those escape sequences:

let &t_SI="\033[6 q" " start insert mode (steady bar, xterm)
let &t_EI="\033[1 q" " end insert mode