Feature request: Cursor colours by mode

[dxmh]

Helix has recently added support for coloured cursors depending on mode (i.e. normal, insert, select):

helix-editor/helix#5130

So it's now possible for themes to set primary and non-primary cursor colours for each mode.

I've done some quick local theme overrides to Catppuccin Mocha in order to demo this functionality in the clip below:

cursor-colours.mov

This makes for a really nice editing experience and it would be great to have this functionality as part of this official Catppuccin theme for Helix. 🙂

In case it's helpful, below is the theme override configuration I used for the clip above.

From my NixOS config:

{
  programs.helix.themes = {
    custom = {
      "inherits" = "catppuccin_mocha";
      "ui.statusline.normal" = { fg = "base"; bg = "lavender"; };
      "ui.statusline.insert" = { fg = "base"; bg = "green"; };
      "ui.statusline.select" = { fg = "base"; bg = "yellow"; };
      "ui.cursor.primary.normal" = { fg = "base"; bg = "lavender"; };
      "ui.cursor.primary.insert" = { fg = "base"; bg = "green"; };
      "ui.cursor.primary.select" = { fg = "base"; bg = "yellow"; };
      # The non-primary cursor colours need to be a dimmed version of the above
      "ui.cursor.normal" = { fg = "base"; bg = "#A6ADC8"; };
      "ui.cursor.insert" = { fg = "base"; bg = "#AACCC6"; };
      "ui.cursor.select" = { fg = "base"; bg = "#B6A98B"; };
    };
  };
}

Please note that the colours and combinations were quickly thrown together and are not perfect.

It should be possible to derive something nicer when blending existing palette colours like done here.