highlight-undo.nvim

Highlight changed text after Undo / Redo operations. Purely lua / nvim api implementation, no external dependencies needed.

In Action

Installation

Using Lazy:

  {
    'tzachar/highlight-undo.nvim',
    opts = {
      ...
    },
  },

Setup

You can manually setup highlight-undo as follows:

require('highlight-undo').setup({
  duration = 300,
  undo = {
    hlgroup = 'HighlightUndo',
    mode = 'n',
    lhs = 'u',
    map = 'undo',
    opts = {}
  },
  redo = {
    hlgroup = 'HighlightRedo',
    mode = 'n',
    lhs = '<C-r>',
    map = 'redo',
    opts = {}
  },
  highlight_for_count = true,
})

Keymaps

Specify which keymaps should trigger the beginning and end of tracking changes (see here). By default, the plugin starts tracking changes before an undo or a redo.

Keymaps are specified in the same format as vim.keymap.set accepts: mode, lhs, rhs, opts. Maps are passed verbatim to vim.keymap.set.

hlgroup

Specify the highlighting group to use.

By default, highlight-undo will use HighlightUndo for the undo action and HighlightRedo for the redo action. Both of these groups, are defined when the plugin is loaded. If the groups are already defined elsewhere in your config then they will not be overwritten. You can also use others groups, if desired.

duration

The duration (in milliseconds) to highlight changes. Default is 300.

highlight_for_count

Enable support for highlighting when a <count> is provided before the key. If set to false it will only highlight when the mapping is not prefixed with a <count>.

Default: true

How the Plugin Works

highlight-undo will remap the u and <C-r> keys (for undo and redo, by default) and hijack the calls. By utilizing nvim_buf_attach to get indications for changes in the buffer, the plugin can achieve very low overhead.