Minimal vim folds

I use folds to reduce visual information on screen, but Vim’s default folds are pretty cluttered. Here’s Vim with defaults folds:

screenshot of vim with default folds

I searched the internet to find a good pre-made config, but couldn’t find any. So I figured out how to customize it myself. Here’s the final result:

screenshot of vim with minimal visual indicators for folds

And here’s the config:

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" Custom Fold Text
  function! MyFoldText()
      let line = getline(v:foldstart)
      let foldedlinecount = v:foldend - v:foldstart + 1
      return '  '. foldedlinecount . line
  endfunction
  set foldtext=MyFoldText()
  set fillchars=fold:\

First is an icon, which indicates a fold. Then a number, the number of hidden lines. Then the first line in the fold.

For the icon (on line 5), I have a Nerd Font glyph (search for ‘fold’), which doesn’t render on the browser, but works in Vim since I’m using JetBrainsMono Nerd Font. If you don’t have a Nerd Font installed, feel free to replace it with whatever character represents a fold to you.

Also note that on line 8, there is a space after the backslash.

Tweak for Nord Colorscheme

One more thing - I’m using the Nord color scheme, and I don’t like its default colors for folds. I changed it like so:

" Nord Overrides
  augroup nord-theme-overrides
    autocmd!
    autocmd ColorScheme nord highlight Folded guibg=#313745 guifg=#556076
  augroup END