vim2godot

Turns a Vim or Neovim colorscheme, such as any on vimcolorschemes.com, into a Godot 4.5+ editor theme. It is separate from the godotnvim plugin and does not need it.

cendre, converted, in the Godot script editor

gruvbox (light)	tokyonight-storm

How Godot editor themes work #

Godot themes the editor in two separate layers, both per user rather than per project:

Script editor colors: Editor Settings → Text Editor → Theme → Color Theme picks a .tet file from Godot’s text_editor_themes folder. A .tet is a ConfigFile with a [color_theme] section of key="rrggbbaa" lines, one per text_editor/theme/highlighting/* setting.
Everything else (docks, panels, inspector): Editor Settings → Interface → Theme. With the preset set to Custom, Godot derives the whole interface from a base color and an accent color, with Contrast setting how far panels step away from the base.

vim2godot writes both: a .tet, and an EditorScript that sets the interface colors and selects the .tet.

Requirements #

Neovim 0.10+ (nvim on your PATH, or -nvim/$NVIM)
git, to fetch schemes that aren’t already on disk
Go 1.24+, only to run or build it from source

Get it #

Each release has a prebuilt vim2godot for Linux, macOS and Windows (amd64 and arm64), as colorscheme-<version>-<os>-<arch>.tar.gz (.zip on Windows), with the same version number as the addon. Unpack it and put vim2godot on your PATH. SHA256SUMS.txt in the release has the checksums. On macOS, the binary isn’t signed: if Gatekeeper blocks it, run xattr -d com.apple.quarantine vim2godot.

Or run it from source in this directory: use go run . wherever the examples below say vim2godot.

Convert a scheme #

vim2godot https://vimcolorschemes.com/r/aejkatappaja/cendre

The argument can be a vimcolorschemes.com page, a GitHub URL, owner/name (GitHub), any other git URL, or a local directory. Each scheme in the repo’s colors/ folder becomes themes/<name>/ with:

<name>.tet: the script-editor colors
apply_<name>.gd: sets the interface colors and switches to the theme

A scheme that has both dark and light versions (it follows 'background') is written twice, as <name>-dark and <name>-light. Useful flags:

Flag	Does
`-out dir`	Where to write themes (default `themes`)
`-scheme a,b`	Only these colorschemes from the repo (default: all in `colors/`)
`-background dark`	Only try this `'background'` (default `dark,light`)
`-with owner/repo`	Repos the scheme needs on `'runtimepath'`, such as `rktjmp/lush.nvim` for zenbones
`-install`	Also copy the `.tet` files into Godot’s `text_editor_themes` folder
`-nvim path`	Neovim to use (or set `$NVIM`)
`-version`	Print the version

For example, only tokyonight’s storm style, installed straight into Godot:

vim2godot -scheme tokyonight-storm -install folke/tokyonight.nvim

This runs the colorscheme’s code in Neovim (nvim --headless --clean), so only convert schemes you would load in your own editor.

Install a theme in Godot #

Copy <name>.tet into Godot’s text_editor_themes folder (or pass -install):
- macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Godot/text_editor_themes/
- Linux: ~/.config/godot/text_editor_themes/
- Windows: %APPDATA%\Godot\text_editor_themes\
Open apply_<name>.gd in Godot’s Script editor and run it with File → Run (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+X). It saves your scenes and restarts the editor, because scripts can’t make the editor reload its theme.

Or set it by hand in Editor → Editor Settings: Text Editor → Theme → Color Theme to <name>, and Interface → Theme → Preset to Custom with the base and accent colors from the top of apply_<name>.gd.

With the godotnvim plugin, Neovim’s godot colorscheme reads the script editor’s colors, so Neovim follows the new theme too.

How colors are mapped #

vim2godot loads the scheme, reads every highlight group with links resolved (nvim_get_hl), and fills each Godot setting from the first group that sets a color. Treesitter groups come first; Neovim links them to the legacy groups when a scheme only sets those, so old Vim schemes work too. The full table is rules in mapping.go. The main ones:

Godot	Neovim
background, text	`Normal`
keyword, control flow keyword	`@keyword`, `@keyword.conditional`
function, function definition	`@function.call`, `@function`
member variable	`@variable.member`, `@property`
types	`@type.builtin`, `@type`
string, number	`@string`, `@number`
annotation	`@attribute`
node path (`$Node`, `%Node`)	`@string.special.path`, `@string.special`
comments, doc comments	`@comment`, `@comment.documentation`
current line, selection, line numbers	`CursorLine`, `Visual`, `LineNr`
completion popup	`Pmenu`, `PmenuSel`, `PmenuThumb`
errors, warnings, breakpoints	`DiagnosticError`, `DiagnosticWarn`
search results	`Search`, translucent, since Godot draws it under the text

The interface base color is CursorLine’s background (or a step off Normal’s), and the accent is CursorLineNr, or the most saturated syntax color when that is grey.

Limits: a transparent scheme (no Normal background) can’t be converted, and a scheme’s setup options (like cendre’s medium and soft depths) aren’t reachable, only what :colorscheme <name> gives.

Tests #

go test ./...

TestExtract loads testdata/colors/fixture.vim in Neovim; it is skipped when nvim isn’t found.

Example #

themes/cendre is cendre (MIT) converted with the first command above.