Vim clear last search highlighting

Question

After doing a search in Vim  I get all the occurrences highlighted  How can I disable that   I now do another search for something gibberish that can t be found   Is there a way to just temporarily disable the highlight and then re-enable it when needed again

User · Answer

This is what I use  extracted from a lot of different questions answers    nnoremap  lt silent gt   lt Esc gt  lt Esc gt   let       lt CR gt    With  double  Esc you remove the highlighting  but as soon as you search again  the highlighting reappears     Another alternative   nnoremap  lt silent gt   lt Esc gt  lt Esc gt   noh lt CR gt   call clearmatches   lt CR gt    According to vim documentation      clearmatches         Clears all matches previously defined by  matchadd    and the        match  commands

User · Answer

My original solution  below  was dirty and wasteful  I now use  noh  Like many features in Vim  the right way is often not easily discoverable   --   DO NOT DO THIS   Search for an unlikely character sequence  mash the keys on the home row      alskdjf   This works in vim and less  and it s easier to remember type than  ShaunBouckaert s logically cleaner solution  to clear the last used search pattern     let          A potential downside is that it adds junk to your search history

User · Answer

You can do   noh   or  nohlsearch to temporarily disable search highlighting until the next search

User · Answer

I use the following in my    vimrc  nnoremap  lt Leader gt  lt space gt   noh lt Enter gt   This makes it very easy and quick to clear the current highlighted search  My leader key is mapped to   so this makes the action very easy to perform with my right pinky finger and thumb

User · Answer

I don t like it either  I found it tiresome to enter  nohl all the time     so i put the following mapping in my  vimrc  noremap  lt C-  gt   nohl lt cr gt   lt backspace gt    The first bit   nohl lt cr gt   clears the highlighting  the second bit    lt backspace gt   is a trick to clean the command line   The search is still there in the background  so if you simply hit n it ll re-highlight and take you to the next occurrence

User · Answer

To turn off highlighting until the next search   noh

User · Answer

I generally map  noh to the backslash key   To reenable the highlighting  just hit n  and it will highlight again

User · Answer

I personnaly like to map esc to the command  noh as follow   map  lt esc gt   noh lt cr gt   I wrote a whole article recently about Vim search  how to search on vanilla Vim and the best plugin to enhance the search features

User · Answer

nnoremap  lt cr gt   noh lt CR gt  lt CR gt   lt backspace gt    That way I get rid of  noh shown in the commandline  when hitting enter after the search     is like starting entering a new command  Backspace clears it and puts the focus back into the editor window

User · Answer

One more solution by combining 2 top answers    To clear the last used search pattern  nnoremap  lt F3 gt   let         lt CR gt

User · Answer

From the VIM Documentation  To clear the last used search pattern    let           This will not set the pattern to an empty string  because that would match  everywhere  The pattern is really cleared  like when starting Vim

User · Answer

If you have incsearch vim plugin installed  then there is a setting to automatically clear highlight after searching   let g incsearch auto nohlsearch   1

User · Answer

Any solution by nohlsearch is not prefered  what about next search  The best answer is created by let       quot  quot   but I do not like map by function key on mac  so here is mine  let mapleader     let g mapleader     nnoremap  lt leader gt cs  let       quot  quot  lt cr gt

User · Answer

If you want to be able to enable disable highlighting quickly  you can map a key to    Press F4 to toggle highlighting on off  and show current value   noremap  lt F4 gt   set hlsearch  hlsearch  lt CR gt    Just put the above snippet in you  vimrc file    That s the most convenient way for me to show and hide the search highlight with a sing key stroke   For more information check the documentation http   vim wikia com wiki Highlight all search pattern matches

User · Answer

There are two  must have  plugins for this    sensible - Ctrl-l for nohlsearch and redraw screen  unimpared -  oh   oh and coh to control hlsearch

User · Answer

To turn off highlighting until the next search    noh   Or turn off highlighting completely   set nohlsearch   Or  to toggle it   set hlsearch   nnoremap  lt F3 gt   set hlsearch  lt CR gt

User · Answer

From http   twitter com jonbho status 2194406821    Clear highlighting on escape in normal mode nnoremap  lt esc gt   noh lt return gt  lt esc gt  nnoremap  lt esc gt     lt esc gt      The second line is needed for mapping to the escape key since Vim internally uses escape to represent special keys

User · Answer

Janus for VIM and GVIM has a number of baked-in things for newbs like me  including   lt leader gt hs - toggles highlight search   which is exactly what you need  Just type  hs in normal mode   The leader key is mapped to   by default    HTH

User · Answer

Define mappings for both behaviors  because both are useful   Completely clear the search buffer  e g   pressing n for next match will not resume search  Retain search buffer  and toggle highlighting the search results on off on      e g   pressing n will resume search  but highlighting will be based on current state of toggle    quot  use double-Esc to completely clear the search buffer nnoremap  lt silent gt   lt Esc gt  lt Esc gt   let       quot  quot  lt CR gt   quot  use space to retain the search buffer and toggle highlighting off on nnoremap  lt silent gt   lt Space gt   set hlsearch  lt CR gt

User · Answer

The answers proposing  noh or  nohlsearch  e g   Matt McMinn   s  are correct for temporarily disabling search highlighting     as asked in the original question   I thought I d contribute a mapping that I find useful in Normal mode   nnoremap  lt C-L gt   nohlsearch lt CR gt  lt C-L gt    By default  CtrlL in Vim clears and redraws the screen  A number of command line programs  mostly those using the GNU Readline library  such as Bash  use the same key combination to clear the screen  This feature is useful in the situation where a process running in the background prints to the terminal  over-writing parts of the foreground process   This Normal mode mapping also clears the highlighting of most recent search term before redrawing the screen  I find the two features complement each other and it   s convenient to use one CtrlL for both actions together rather than create a separate mapping for disabling search highlighting   NB  noremap is used rather than map as otherwise  the mapping would be recursive   Tip  I usually remap Caps Lock to Ctrl to make it easier to type such key combinations  the details for doing this depend on your choice of OS   windowing system  and are off-topic for this answer   Both the following tips include information on mapping  Caps Lock to Ctrl as well as Esc    Map caps lock to escape in XWindows Map caps lock to escape in Windows

User · Answer

Based on  baruch-even answer  you can delete search term on ESC double press  while in normal mode with   nnoremap  lt esc gt   let         lt return gt  lt esc gt  nnoremap  lt esc gt     lt esc gt

User · Answer

I just use the simple nohl below and no plugins are needed    nohl

User · Answer

Disable search highlighting permanently  Matches won t be highlighted whenever you do a search using     set nohlsearch     Clear highlight until next search   noh   or  nohlsearch  clears until n or N is pressed     Clear highlight on pressing ESC  nnoremap  lt esc gt   noh lt return gt  lt esc gt      Clear highlight on pressing another key or custom map   Clear highlights on pressing    backslash   nnoremap    noh lt return gt   Clear highlights on hitting ESC twice  nnoremap  lt esc gt  lt esc gt   noh lt return gt

User · Answer

Turn off highlighting as soon as you move the cursor   Install vim-cool  It was created to fix this specific problem  It turns off highlighting as soon as you move the cursor  Be warned though  it requires a recent vim version

User · Answer

My guess is that the original question concerned not disabling search highlighting but simply clearing the highlighting from the last search  The solution of searching for a gibberish string  which the original poster mentioned  is one I ve been using for some time to clear highlighting from a previous search  but it s ugly and cumbersome   Several suggestions I ve found to add nnoremap     to    vimrc have the effect here of putting vim into replace mode at startup  which isn t at all what I want  The simplest solution I ve found is to add the line  nmap  lt esc gt  lt esc gt   noh lt return gt    to my    vimrc  This hews to the KISS principle and doesn t interfere with the arrow keys  which using a single  lt esc gt  does  A double- lt esc gt  is required in command mode  or a triple- lt esc gt  from insert or replace mode  to clear highlighting from a previous search  but from a UI perspective this makes the operation about as simple as possible

User · Answer

I think mixing  ShaunBouckaert and Mar 19  09 at 16 22 answers is a good compromise      Reset highlighted search nnoremap  lt CR gt   let       lt CR gt  lt CR gt    Press Enter and the highlighted text is no longer highlighted  while search highlighting is still enabled

User · Answer

you can use  noremap to turn on off  for the search result like this   noremap  lt F3 gt   set hls  hls  lt CR gt

User · Answer

You can alternatively add mapping on your  vimrc file as      nmap  lt C-N gt   nohlsearch   and then you can press      Ctrl N   to anytime to clear the highlighted text

User · Answer

I added this to my vimrc file       command  H let            After you do a search and want to clear the highlights from your search just do  H

User · Answer

Remapped to  in my  vimrc local file  quick and dirty but very functional     Clear last search highlighting map  lt Space gt   noh lt cr gt

User · Answer

This will clear the search highlight after updatetime milliseconds of inactivity     updatetime defaults to 4000ms or 4s but I set mine to 10s   It is important to note that updatetime does more than just this so read the docs before you change it   function  SearchHlClear       let         endfunction augroup searchhighlight     autocmd      autocmd CursorHold CursorHoldI   call SearchHlClear   augroup END

User · Answer

I found this answer years ago on vim org   Add the following to your  vimrc    This unsets the  last search pattern  register by hitting return nnoremap  lt CR gt   noh lt CR gt  lt CR gt    Thus  after your search  just hit return again in command mode  and the highlighting disappears

[vim] Vim clear last search highlighting

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