MacVim r181

[ychin]

Updated to Vim 9.1.1128

This update contains a completely new GUI tabs implementation by @sfsam! It also contains lots of small fixes for window resizing and full screen mode that aims to make using MacVim feel rock solid and stable.

Defaults Change

New settings defaults related to window sizing #1528:

• "Smoothly resizes window" is now on by default. MacVim's window will now resize smoothly instead of snapped to the size of the character grid.
• Vim's guioptions now has k set by default (:h go-k). This prevents MacVim's window size from changing unnecessarily when showing/hiding tabs or changing font size.

These should align MacVim better with how other apps work and integrate better with OS window management, including macOS 15 Sequoia's window tiling feature.

Features

Tabs

MacVim has a new tabs implementation! The old version (PSMTabBarControl) is not maintained and lacks features such as overflowing tabs and customizable colors. The new tabs will overflow horizontally and are scrollable. They also animate when tabs are closed or moved, respect system settings such as right-to-left locales and high-contrast modes, and are designed to fit within the currently selected Vim colors.

There are a few ways to customize the colors of the new tabs, under the "Appearance" settings pane. MacVim defaults to an "Automatic colors" mode which tries to pick sensible colors automatically based on the current foreground/background colors. However, you can also configure it to simply use the tab colors specified by the Vim color scheme (some color schemes will work better than others depending on their choice of colors). Another new option is "Use tabs background color" which when combined with "Transparent title bar" allows the title bar and tabs to look like a single cohesive whole.

Relevant work:

• Tabs #1120 (by @sfsam)
• Also: Make GUI tabs track Vim tabs in updates and animate correctly #1535 / Tabs: Expose option to show scroll tab buttons, fix tab scroll behavior, fix memory leaks, cache images and other cleanups #1536 / MMTabline: Localize button strings #1537 / MMTabline: Add right-to-left (RTL) locale support #1538 / MMTabline: Add Vim colorscheme / window use tab fill color support #1539 / Tabs: Use TabLineFill fg, fix colorscheme w/ transparent/inverse highlights #1557 / Tabs: Tune automatic colors and use LAB for deriving colors #1558 / Tabs: Fix MMHoverButton poor usage of images and potential stack overflow #1560

New Vim features

• new bundled color scheme:
  • unokai (Update colorschemes vim/vim#16443)
• new bundled optional plugins (use packadd to enable them):
  • helptoc: Use :HelpToc to show an interactive table of contents for Vim help, man pages, Markdown files, and terminal. [RFC] optional plugin to provide table of contents in help files in popup menu vim/vim#10446
• new options:
  • set diffopt+=linematch:{n}. Matches lines better when in diff mode. v9.1.1009
  • findfunc. Customizes :find and other commands. v9.1.0831
  • set completeopt+=preinsert. Preview inserted text in completion. v9.1.1056
  • messagesopt. Allows customizing hit-enter behavior. v9.1.0908
• new functions:
  • getcellpixels(). Query the pixel size of a character cell in the grid. v9.1.0854 / Implement getcellpixels() for MacVim #1554 / Update getcellpixels() docs to point out the delay in MacVim GUI #1555
• Vim tutor has a new interactive plugin (:h :Tutor) (v9.1.0836). There is also now a chapter 2 (Add Chapter Two #5719 vim/vim#5729).

Misc New Settings

• "Open untitled window" (General) has a new option to only open on MacVim re-activation. Expose setting to only open untitled window only on reactivation #1509
• "Show document icon at title bar" (Appearance). Previously MacVim implicitly hid the document icon when using transparent title bar. This is now customizable. Add setting for whether to show document icon at title bar #1510

General

• The MacVim dmg installer has a new design. Courtesy of @jasonlong. Beautify MacVim's dmg installer background and volume icon #1540 Fix dmg installer to not have duplicate images and icons #1545

• Legacy builds (macOS 10.9 - 10.12) are no longer built by GitHub hosted runners, due to GitHub's deprecation of old runners. They are now built by a custom self-hosted VM instead. In the future we hope to set up reproducible builds (Epic: Support reproducible builds #1506) so it will not matter who's building the app as it would be verifiable. ci: Add support for using self-hosted runners for legacy builds #1559

• "Nightly" build: We now build a dmg installer for every commit. This allows for trying out the latest developmental version of MacVim, but note that the app will not be signed / notarized, and it will not be as polished as official release/pre-release builds. See wiki for instructions. Always build dmg installer in CI #1532

Fixes

Apple "Intelligence" Writing Tools

macOS 15 Sequoia's Apple "Intelligence" Writing Tools should work correctly with MacVim now. To use it, select some text, right click to show menu, and then select the "Writing Tools" sub-menu. As part of this fix, the integration with the "Services" menu now works more reliably as well. You can select texts in blockwise visual mode and select a service and MacVim will try to place the new texts back to the blockwise selection if possible. #1552

Window resizing and full screen

• Flicker begone: Changing font size, showing/hiding tabs or scroll bars, or entering non-native full screen should no longer cause MacVim to flicker. Previously there could be a momentary but distracting/annoying stale image that flashes briefly. Reduce flicker when changing fonts/adding tabs in go+=k/fullscreen #1547 Reduce flicker when entering non-native full screen #1549
• Fixed issue where resizing MacVim window would occasionally cause Vim to be stuck in a stale wrong size. Fix resizing MacVim window occasionally result in a stale wrong Vim size #1518
• Non-native full screen now supports blurradius option. Fix non-native full screen to support 'blurradius' #1546
• Fixed window size not always restoring correctly when exiting full screen. Non-native full screen also works more reliably in multi-monitor setup. Fix full screen window restore / multi-screen / misc issues #1525
• Fixed non-native full screen mode when using an external monitor with a MacBook with a notch, and having the "Show menu bar in non-native mode" option set. Previously MacVim would sometimes miscalculate the menu bar height in the second screen. Fix non-native full screen menu sizing / make resize option updates immediate #1548
• Fixed misc issues with non-native full screen's interaction with fuoptions and also the transparency setting, and rare crash. Fix non-native full screen misc crash, background color, and transparency issues #1521

Other Fixes

• Fixed issue where changing font size (using Cmd =/-) with guifont set to "-monospace-" would result in guifont being changed to a confusing name like ".AppleSystemUIFontMonospaced-Regular". Fix fontSizeUp/Down actions to preserve -monospace- font alias #1544
• "MacVim Website" menu item now goes to the updated URL. Fix menu item "MacVim Website" to go to correct URL #1524
• What's New page now allows changing font size (using Cmd =/-), and showing table of contents. Add font size up/down support and allow anchor links for What's New page #1561 Fix What's New URL checking logic to compare port correctly #1562
• Dark mode documentation is now a bit clearer on v:os_appearance. Dark mode improve docs for v:os_appearance and add tests #1511
• Using dictionary look up on selected texts (by right clicking and then selecting "Look Up" in the pop-up menu) is now more resilient as it uses Vim's native getregion() to determine the selected texts. Use getregion() for showing definition of selected texts #1508

Scripting

• Scripting languages versions:
  • Ruby is now built against 3.4, up from 3.3.
  • Perl is now built against 5.34, up from 5.30.

Compatibility

Compatibility

Requires macOS 10.9 or above. (10.9 - 10.12 requires downloading a separate legacy build)

Script interfaces have compatibility with these versions:

• Lua 5.4
• Perl 5.34
• Python2 2.7
• Python3 3.9 or above
• Ruby 3.4

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This discussion was created from the release MacVim r181.

[UncleBill]

Congratulation! 🎉 And thanks for your work!

Another new option is "Use tabs background color" which when combined with "Transparent title bar" allows the title bar and tabs to look like a single cohesive whole.

It doesn't work on macOS 12 for me. The title bar is just transparent.

[ychin]

Are you actually using the transparency Vim option? Yeah the title just stay transparent under this mode if you have transparent title bar. It had been low priority to fix. What the release notes meant is having the "Transparent title bar" option set, but not transparency set to any non-zero value. I could look at fixing this in next release. Just out of curiosity do you always have transparency option set in your personal configs?

[UncleBill]

Are you actually using the transparency Vim option?
Just out of curiosity do you always have transparency option set in your personal configs?

I am. And it's set to 5 in my config.

It does work if I set transparency to 0, thanks! Looking forward to the next version!

[ychin]

Ah ok. It just makes it slightly transparent. The title bar fix is tracked in #1564.

[iAGorynT]

Thanks for everyone's hard work and congratulations on releasing MacVim r181!

Excellent!!!