Release notes from macvim

MacVim r182.1 (prerelease)

2026-01-12T02:18:15Z

Updated to Vim 9.1.2068

This is a pre-release version of MacVim. To use the latest stable release, see https://github.com/macvim-dev/macvim/releases/latest

What's Changed

Whats New page use non-persistent data store by @ychin in #1619
Build MacVim binary release with GNU iconv instead of Apple iconv by @ychin in #1626

Full Changelog: release-182...prerelease-182.1

MacVim r182

2025-10-31T21:47:26Z

Updated to Vim 9.1.1887

This update is still built against macOS 15 Sequoia, and does not contain any specific fixes or improvements for macOS 26 Tahoe. That will come in a future update.

Announcements

Moving macOS 10.13 - 10.15 support to legacy release

Currently, MacVim binary releases are available in two versions: a normal version (macOS 10.13 or above), and a legacy version (macOS 10.9 or above). Starting next release (r183), the normal version will require macOS 11.0 Big Sur (due to Xcode 26 requirements), and macOS 10.13-10.15 users will need to use the legacy version instead. This will mostly be a transparent change, and the updater will automatically update to the right version. The legacy version should be almost identical to said users as they are using older versions of macOS that can’t make use of newer OS features to begin with.

In the future we may remove support for macOS 10.9-10.12 but for now they are still supported.

Features

Better mouse support

Scroll wheels should feel much better to use in MacVim. A small scroll is now guaranteed to scroll at least one line, and shift-scrolling (horizontal scroll) works correctly now. You can now also turn off macOS's scroll wheel acceleration to scroll a fixed amount of lines in the "Input" settings pane. #1566
Mouse buttons 4 and 5 can now be bound to <X1Mouse> and <X2Mouse> in Vim mappings (:h X1Mouse). #1534

New Vim Features

Diff mode improvements
- Vim diff can now highlight per-character or per-word differences within a line. Per-character highlighting is now used by default. See :h 'diffopt' under "inline". v9.1.1243
- Diff anchors allow for more explicit controls over how and where the diff algorithm aligns text across files (:h diff-anchors). v9.1.1557
Lots of auto-completion improvements. Some highlights below:
- New option: autocomplete. Get completion suggestions as you type. See :h ins-autocompletion. v9.1.1590
- Fuzzy matching now uses the fzf algorithm. v9.1.1627
- Popup menu borders can now be styled (:h 'pumborder' / :h 'completepopup'). v9.1.1835 / v9.1.1856
- Can now specify a custom completion source when using insert-mode completion (:h 'complete'). v9.1.1301
- set completeopt+=nearest will sort completion items by proximity to the cursor. v9.1.1308
- Command-line completion
  - Search commands like / and :g can be tab-completed now. v9.1.1490 v9.1.1526
  - Commands like :filetype and :highlight have better auto-completion. v9.1.1340 / v9.1.1138
New vertical tab panel (:h tabpanel). v9.1.1391
new bundled optional plugins (use packadd to enable them):
- hlyank (:h package-hlyank): Briefly highlight region of last yank command
new commands:
- :uniq (:h :uniq): Remove duplicate adjacent lines v9.1.1477

General

Sparkle (updater for MacVim) is now updated to 2.8.0. #1605

Security Fixes

Fixed MacVim erroneously setting the get-task-allow entitlement, which could allow another user-installed application to inspect it (CVE-2025-8597) #1585

Fixes

Fixed issue where macOS services (available in the "Services" menu) could not insert text when not in visual mode. #1571 #1569
Fixed issue where guifont did not accept PostScript names with underscores (e.g. "CascadiaMono-Regular_Light"). #1600
MacVim now uses the standard v:colornames variable for choosing highlight colors. #1568
Vim syntax now understands MacVim-specific function showdefinition(). #1601

Compatibility

Requires macOS 10.9 or above. (10.9 - 10.12 requires downloading a separate legacy build)

Script interfaces have compatibility with these versions:

Lua 5.4
Perl 5.34
Python2 2.7
Python3 3.9 or above
Ruby 3.4

MacVim r181.2 (prerelease)

2025-07-23T02:55:17Z

Updated to Vim 9.1.1577

This Vim update comes with further improvements to the diff functionality by supporting diff anchors (:h diff-anchors). There is also now a vertical tab panel (:h tabpanel).

This is a pre-release version of MacVim. To use the latest stable release, see https://github.com/macvim-dev/macvim/releases/latest

What's Changed

Remove get-task-allow entitlement from signed builds by @ychin in #1585
Sparkle 2.7.1 by @ychin in #1587

New Contributors

@ankddev made their first contribution in #1578

Full Changelog: prerelease-181.1...prerelease-181.2

MacVim r181.1 (prerelease)

2025-03-28T10:38:05Z

Updated to Vim 9.1.1251

This Vim update contains a new diff highlight mode to allow per-character/word diff from v9.1.1243 (use :set diffopt+=inline:char to enable). Feel free to try it out and use it as a Git diff tool! (git difftool --tool=gvimdiff)

This is a pre-release version of MacVim. To use the latest stable release, see https://github.com/macvim-dev/macvim/releases/latest

What's Changed

Support extra side mouse buttons in MacVim (X1 and X2) by @ychin in #1534
Add better scroll wheel support and option to disable acceleration by @ychin in #1566
Remove Colors.plist and fix CI by @ychin in #1568
Fix macOS services no longer able to insert texts in non-Visual modes by @ychin in #1571

Full Changelog: release-181...prerelease-181.1

MacVim r181

2025-02-24T03:31:54Z

Updated to Vim 9.1.1128

This update contains a completely new GUI tabs implementation by @sfsam! It also contains lots of small fixes for window resizing and full screen mode that aims to make using MacVim feel rock solid and stable.

Defaults Change

New settings defaults related to window sizing #1528:

"Smoothly resizes window" is now on by default. MacVim's window will now resize smoothly instead of snapped to the size of the character grid.
Vim's guioptions now has k set by default (:h go-k). This prevents MacVim's window size from changing unnecessarily when showing/hiding tabs or changing font size.

These should align MacVim better with how other apps work and integrate better with OS window management, including macOS 15 Sequoia's window tiling feature.

Features

Tabs

MacVim has a new tabs implementation! The old version (PSMTabBarControl) is not maintained and lacks features such as overflowing tabs and customizable colors. The new tabs will overflow horizontally and are scrollable. They also animate when tabs are closed or moved, respect system settings such as right-to-left locales and high-contrast modes, and are designed to fit within the currently selected Vim colors.

There are a few ways to customize the colors of the new tabs, under the "Appearance" settings pane. MacVim defaults to an "Automatic colors" mode which tries to pick sensible colors automatically based on the current foreground/background colors. However, you can also configure it to simply use the tab colors specified by the Vim color scheme (some color schemes will work better than others depending on their choice of colors). Another new option is "Use tabs background color" which when combined with "Transparent title bar" allows the title bar and tabs to look like a single cohesive whole.

Relevant work:

#1120 (by @sfsam)
Also: #1535 / #1536 / #1537 / #1538 / #1539 / #1557 / #1558 / #1560

New Vim features

new bundled color scheme:
- unokai (vim/vim#16443)
new bundled optional plugins (use packadd to enable them):
- helptoc: Use :HelpToc to show an interactive table of contents for Vim help, man pages, Markdown files, and terminal. vim/vim#10446
new options:
- set diffopt+=linematch:{n}. Matches lines better when in diff mode. v9.1.1009
- findfunc. Customizes :find and other commands. v9.1.0831
- set completeopt+=preinsert. Preview inserted text in completion. v9.1.1056
- messagesopt. Allows customizing hit-enter behavior. v9.1.0908
new functions:
- getcellpixels(). Query the pixel size of a character cell in the grid. v9.1.0854 / #1554 / #1555
Vim tutor has a new interactive plugin (:h :Tutor) (v9.1.0836). There is also now a chapter 2 (vim/vim#5729).

Misc New Settings

"Open untitled window" (General) has a new option to only open on MacVim re-activation. #1509
"Show document icon at title bar" (Appearance). Previously MacVim implicitly hid the document icon when using transparent title bar. This is now customizable. #1510

General

The MacVim dmg installer has a new design. Courtesy of @jasonlong. #1540 #1545
Legacy builds (macOS 10.9 - 10.12) are no longer built by GitHub hosted runners, due to GitHub's deprecation of old runners. They are now built by a custom self-hosted VM instead. In the future we hope to set up reproducible builds (#1506) so it will not matter who's building the app as it would be verifiable. #1559
"Nightly" build: We now build a dmg installer for every commit. This allows for trying out the latest developmental version of MacVim, but note that the app will not be signed / notarized, and it will not be as polished as official release/pre-release builds. See wiki for instructions. #1532

Fixes

Apple "Intelligence" Writing Tools

macOS 15 Sequoia's Apple "Intelligence" Writing Tools should work correctly with MacVim now. To use it, select some text, right click to show menu, and then select the "Writing Tools" sub-menu. As part of this fix, the integration with the "Services" menu now works more reliably as well. You can select texts in blockwise visual mode and select a service and MacVim will try to place the new texts back to the blockwise selection if possible. #1552

Window resizing and full screen

Flicker begone: Changing font size, showing/hiding tabs or scroll bars, or entering non-native full screen should no longer cause MacVim to flicker. Previously there could be a momentary but distracting/annoying stale image that flashes briefly. #1547 #1549
Fixed issue where resizing MacVim window would occasionally cause Vim to be stuck in a stale wrong size. #1518
Non-native full screen now supports blurradius option. #1546
Fixed window size not always restoring correctly when exiting full screen. Non-native full screen also works more reliably in multi-monitor setup. #1525
Fixed non-native full screen mode when using an external monitor with a MacBook with a notch, and having the "Show menu bar in non-native mode" option set. Previously MacVim would sometimes miscalculate the menu bar height in the second screen. #1548
Fixed misc issues with non-native full screen's interaction with fuoptions and also the transparency setting, and rare crash. #1521

Other Fixes

Fixed issue where changing font size (using Cmd =/-) with guifont set to "-monospace-" would result in guifont being changed to a confusing name like ".AppleSystemUIFontMonospaced-Regular". #1544
"MacVim Website" menu item now goes to the updated URL. #1524
What's New page now allows changing font size (using Cmd =/-), and showing table of contents. #1561 #1562
Dark mode documentation is now a bit clearer on v:os_appearance. #1511
Using dictionary look up on selected texts (by right clicking and then selecting "Look Up" in the pop-up menu) is now more resilient as it uses Vim's native getregion() to determine the selected texts. #1508

Scripting

Scripting languages versions:
- Ruby is now built against 3.4, up from 3.3.
- Perl is now built against 5.34, up from 5.30.

Compatibility

Requires macOS 10.9 or above. (10.9 - 10.12 requires downloading a separate legacy build)

Script interfaces have compatibility with these versions:

Lua 5.4
Perl 5.34
Python2 2.7
Python3 3.9 or above
Ruby 3.4

MacVim r180.2 (prerelease)

2025-02-01T12:14:25Z

Updated to Vim 9.1.1050

Note: This update contains a completely new GUI tabs implementation. If you have GUI tabs disabled with set go-=e I recommend giving the new tabs a try!

This is a pre-release version of MacVim. To use the latest stable release, see https://github.com/macvim-dev/macvim/releases/latest

What's Changed

Tabs by @sfsam in #1120
Make GUI tabs track Vim tabs in updates and animate correctly by @ychin in #1535
Tabs: Expose option to show scroll tab buttons, fix tab scroll behavior, fix memory leaks, cache images and other cleanups by @ychin in #1536
MMTabline: Localize button strings by @ychin in #1537
MMTabline: Add right-to-left (RTL) locale support by @ychin in #1538
MMTabline: Add Vim colorscheme / window use tab fill color support by @ychin in #1539

Full Changelog: prerelease-180.1...prerelease-180.2

MacVim r180.1 (prerelease)

2025-01-19T10:27:09Z

Updated to Vim 9.1.1000

This is a pre-release version of MacVim. To use the latest stable release, see https://github.com/macvim-dev/macvim/releases/latest

What's Changed

Use getregion() for showing definition of selected texts by @ychin in #1508
Expose setting to only open untitled window only on reactivation by @ychin in #1509
Add setting for whether to show document icon at title bar by @ychin in #1510
Dark mode improve docs for v:os_appearance and add tests by @ychin in #1511
Add support for macos-15 for CI by @ychin in #1514
Fix non-native fullscreen quit to black screen bug by @ychin in #1516
Fix resizing MacVim window occasionally result in a stale wrong Vim size by @ychin in #1518
Fix non-native full screen misc crash, background color, and transparency issues by @ychin in #1521
Fix menu item "MacVim Website" to go to correct URL by @ychin in #1524
Fix full screen window restore / multi-screen / misc issues by @ychin in #1525
New defaults: Smoothly resize window, guioptions+=k by @ychin in #1528

New Contributors

@ilyagr made their first contribution in #1520

Full Changelog: release-180...prerelease-180.1

MacVim r180

2024-09-11T09:34:51Z

Updated to Vim 9.1.0727

This update mostly syncs to new upstream Vim version, along with small fixes.

Features

New Vim features

Vim now supports the XDG Base Directory Specification. You can now put your vimrc and plugins in ~/.config/vim intsead of ~/.vim / ~/.vimrc. See :h xdg-base-dir. v9.1.0327
Auto completion
- Matched text in a completion popup menu will now be highlighted v9.1.0476
- Insert mode fuzzy completion (:set completopt+=fuzzy). v9.1.0463 / v9.1.0598
New options:
- tabclose: specifies tab closing behavior. v9.1.0572
- winfixbuf: fixes a window to a buffer and prevent navigating away from it. v9.1.0147
New functions:
- getregion() / getregionpos(): Helps retrieve the text selected in a visual selection. v9.1.0120 v9.1.0142 v9.1.0394
- diff(): Diff provided strings. v9.1.0071
- gettext() / bindtextdomain(): Vim plugins can now add localized messages. v9.1.0509.
- filecopy(): Copy a file using Vim script. v9.1.0465
New bundled optional plugins (use packadd to enable them):
- comment: toggle code comments on/off. vim/vim#14634
- nohlsearch: simple package to automatically set nohlsearch. vim/vim#15042
Highlighting for diff files are back to normal. v9.1.0016
Vim9 script improvements.
Miscellaneous smoothscroll, termdebug, security fixes.
Other platforms (these don't affect MacVim and included for reference only):
- GTK Vim GUI can now also use <D-...> to map super keys, similar to MacVim for its Cmd key mappings. This should allow sharing cross-platform configs easier. v9.1.0058
- Vim GUI now supports Wayland in Linux. v9.1.0064

Misc

When resizing MacVim, the title bar's message looks a little nicer now. #1488 by @sfsam
Copyright disclaimer in About MacVim no longer shows a year. #1497

General

Sparkle (updater for MacVim) is now updated to 2.6.4. For legacy builds it's now updated to 1.27.3. #1494

Fixes

Fixed dragging tabs to reorder them resulting in a crash. #1499

Compatibility

Requires macOS 10.9 or above. (10.9 - 10.12 requires downloading a separate legacy build)

Script interfaces have compatibility with these versions:

Lua 5.4
Perl 5.30
Python2 2.7
Python3 3.9 or above
Ruby 3.3

MacVim r179.1 (prerelease)

2024-08-31T09:22:50Z

Updated to Vim 9.1.0695

This is a pre-release version of MacVim. To use the latest stable release, see https://github.com/macvim-dev/macvim/releases/latest

What's Changed

Update CI to remove macOS-11 which has been removed from GitHub Actions by @ychin in #1493
Proposal: change x to × in title bar resize message by @sfsam in #1488
Sparkle 2.6.4 by @ychin in #1494

Full Changelog: release-179...prerelease-179.1

MacVim r179

2024-01-05T06:01:01Z

Updated to Vim 9.1.0

Happy New Year! See #1472 for a retrospective of 2023 and future roadmap.

Also, Vim 9.1 is now released! See announcement.

Features

System monospace font (SF Mono)

MacVim's guifont option now supports a new -monospace- value, which instructs it to use the system monospace font, which is SF Mono in recent macOS versions. As mentioned below (New Vim features), you can now use tab-completion to see the available values in cmdline. See :h macvim-guifont for more details on how to use it (including using different font weights). #1463

Note: I'm contemplating changing the MacVim default value for guifont to be -monospace- in the future so MacVim will always use the native monospace font instead of being hard-coded to Menlo. This makes it more consistent with Apple Terminal and Xcode. Feel free to leave a comment on #1277 if you have opinions on this.

New Vim features

Command-line tab completion improvements and bug fixes (see :h cmdline-completion and :h complete-set-option)
- Most string option values can now be completed. v9.0.1958
- MacVim options (guifont, fuoptions) also support tab completion. #1436
- ++opt (e.g. :e ++) and :terminal ++ completion work as well. v9.0.2025
New options:
- set jumpoptions=stack. Ported from Neovim. v9.0.1921
API changes
- getmousepos() returns a new "coladd" for tab characters. v9.0.2032
:Man now works properly when gdefault is set. vim/vim#13097
A new small Vim script library that may expand in the future. See :h vim-script-library.
Vim9 script improvements.
Miscellaneous security fixes.

Misc

New settings:

"Scroll in one direction only" (Input). Prevents accidental horizontal scrolling when scrolling vertically using a trackpad. #1442

Clean mode (#1453):

Vim can be opened in clean mode (does not use .vimrc or plugins) via the new menu item "New Clean Window". The new menu isn't localized in most languages. Please comment on the issue if you would like to help in localization.
MacVim can be launched without loading user defaults for a clean experience via a command-line flag. See :h macvim-settings.

General

Sparkle (updater for MacVim) is now updated to 2.5.2. The updater can now show multiple release notes when updating MacVim across multiple versions. #1446 #1469
Binary release is now built with more optimized compiler settings. Vim will now run slightly faster than before. #1444
macOS 14 Sonoma:
- Binary release is now built using the macOS 14 SDK (#1434, #1440, #1448). One small change is that very tall characters (e.g. "นี้") on the first line will now draw into the title bar instead of being clipped.
- Fixed printing with :hardcopy under macOS 14. NOTE: Starting from macOS 14, you have to install ps2pdf (available from Ghostscript) yourself before you can print. See #1464
Python 2 support: The default location for locating the Python 2 lib in the binary release is now under /Library/Frameworks rather than /usr/local. Note: Python 2 has long been obsolete. If you rely on Python 2 plugins, consider this a warning as it's only supported as long as it's feasible and could be removed in the future. #1434

Fixes

Fixed non-native full screen mode when using a MacBook with a notch and having the "Show menu bar in non-native mode" option set. Changing the screen resolution while using non-native full screen also works properly now. #1450
Fixed Help menu's documentation search not working with tags with special characters like <Down>. #1455

Compatibility

Requires macOS 10.9 or above. (10.9 - 10.12 requires downloading a separate legacy build)

Script interfaces have compatibility with these versions:

Lua 5.4
Perl 5.30
Python2 2.7
Python3 3.9 or above
Ruby 3.2