Vim how to change the cursor from char block to pre pipe/line

Question

Not sure what the terminology is for it but on Vim the 'cursor' is always like an insert/replace cursor instead of the blinking line cursor I'm used to in other gui editors. Is there any way to change this when in insert mode?

Answer 1

If you are talking about vim inside a shell, you should configure the cursor style in your terminal emulator. Even if you do so, Vim can't toggle the cursor style on-the-fly. That's a limitation of the terminal itself.

If you are talking about the graphical version of vim, called gvim (or macvim), then look at Nupraptor answer.

BTW, I think this question is better suited to the Superuser.com site.

Answer 2

If you're talking about gvim, then you can change the cursor to an 'I' when in insert mode with:

set guicursor=i:ver100-iCursor

EDIT: The 'i' is for insert mode. You can also define it for 'n', 'v', 'c' or 'a' (normal mode, visual mode, command mode or all modes, respectively).

Answer 3

This plugin for vim will actually change the cursor on the fly in iterm (and tmux)

It has a few bugs if you're in tmux, but works great outside of it: https://github.com/sjl/vitality.vim