Powerline is a utility plugin which allows you to create better-looking, more functional vim statuslines. See the screenshots below for a demonstration of the plugin's capabilities.

It's recommended that you install the plugin using Pathogen or Vundle. After the plugin is installed update your help tags and see :help Powerline for instructions on how to enable and configure the plugin.

See the Troubleshooting section below if you're having any issues with the plugin or the font patcher.

Note: You need a patched font to be able to use the symbols in the statusbar. An experimental Python/fontforge-based font patcher is included in the fontpatcher directory. See fontpatcher/README.rst for usage instructions.

Normal mode

Insert mode

Command-T buffer with custom color

Tagbar buffer with custom color

Symbols when buffer is modified or read-only

Split window showing inactive buffer statusline

Normal mode without custom font

I can't see the fancy symbols, what's wrong?

Make sure that you have let g:Powerline_symbols = 'fancy' in your vimrc file. The settings may be loaded too late if you have this in gvimrc, so always put this in your vimrc.

Clear the cache using :PowerlineClearCache and restart vim.

Make sure that you've configured gvim or your terminal emulator to use a patched font.

I'm unable to patch my font, what should I do?

Font patching is only known to work on most Linux and OS X machines. If you have followed the instructions in the fontpatcher README and still have problems, please submit an issue on GitHub.

You can download some community-contributed patched fonts from the Powerline wiki if you don't want to mess around with the font patcher.

The Syntastic/Fugitive statusline flags don't work!

These flags should work without any configuration. If you installed either plugin after Powerline, you'll have to clear the cache using :PowerlineClearCache and restart vim.

The colors are weird in the default OS X Terminal app!

The default OS X Terminal app is known to have some issues with the Powerline colors. Please use another terminal emulator. iTerm2 should work fine.

The statusbar is hidden/only appears in split windows!

Make sure that you have set laststatus=2 in your vimrc.

If you have any other issues and you can't find the answer in the docs, please submit an issue on GitHub.