The init.lua file

Tree-sitter is a parsing tool/library that improves syntax highlighting in Neovim.

Tree-sitter comes built-in with Neovim, and is relatively easy to configure.

Configuring Tree-sitter

Add the following code to your configuration, e.g. in your init.lua or in lua/treesitter=setup.lua:

-- .config/nvim/lua/plugins/treesitter-setup.lua
require("nvim-treesitter.configs").setup({
  -- A list of parser names, or "all" (the five listed parsers should always be installed)
  ensure_installed = { "c", "lua", "vim", "vimdoc", "query" },
  -- enable syntax highlighting
  highlight = {
      enable = true
  }
})

Replace the languages in ensure_installed with the relevant languages you need. The full list of languages and additional configuration options are available here.

Help! My code still looks the same!

Sometimes you won’t see any noticeable difference in your snytax highlighting until you install a language server (which we will do in the LSP section).

Tree-sitter and Colorschemes

When picking a Neovim colorscheme, ensure that it’s tree-sitter supported/compatible — Awesome Neovim provides a list of themes which you can use.

There is more information on setting up themes in the colorscheme section.