This is a simplified and optimized^* version of Gruvbox that I have developed to address some issues I had with the official color scheme.

These are the main differences compared to the official Gruvbox:

• by default, no plugin and filetype highlight groups to avoid messing up syntax highlighting after switching color schemes (they can be enabled through options);
• reduced number of options;
• all options are documented;
• slightly different (and, IMHO, better) 256-color palette;
• gracefully degrades to 16, 8 or even only 2 colors;
• support for transparent backgrounds in terminals;
• no shell scripts;
• up to date highlight group definitions (e.g., includes ToolbarLine and ToolbarButton);
• defines g:terminal_ansi_colors;
• generated by Colortemplate, i.e., easily hackable.

^* Below is the result of a benchmark made using Vim 8.1.1550 and iTerm 2 v3.2.9 on a MacBook Pro Early 2015 with macOS 10.14.5. Note that Gruvbox 8 is optimized for what are believed to be the most common use cases, i.e., GUI, true-color terminals and 256-color terminals.

True-color Variants

256-color Variants

Less capable terminals

Earlier versions of Gruvbox 8 would complain when the terminal did not have enough colors. This is no longer the case: Gruvbox 8 will gracefully degrade to 16, 8 or even 2 colors, as illustrated by the screenshot below:

Hacking

Do you want to hack the theme? Install Colortemplate, edit the files in the templates folder, then rebuild the color schemes.