Lualine for Neovim

3 min readFeb 7, 2023

An amazing status line for Neovim

Lualine is a blazing fast and easy to configure Neovim statusline written in Lua. Unlike other statusline plugins, lualine loads only the components you specify, and nothing else. It’s goal is to provide a easy to customize and fast statusline.

Requirements

neovim >= 0.5
nvim-web-devicons

Installation

Insertion of github repository should be done in plugins.lua file so that lualine gets installed in our IDE.

-- Plugins.lua file

return {

    -- Bufferline
    {
        'akinsho/bufferline.nvim',
        dependencies = 'nvim-tree/nvim-web-devicons'
    },

    -- Colorscheme
    {
        'folke/tokyonight.nvim',
    },

    -- Lualine (THE NEW EXTENSION ADDED IN CONFIGURATION)
    {
        'nvim-lualine/lualine.nvim',
        dependencies = { 'nvim-tree/nvim-web-devicons' }
    },

    -- Which-key
    {
        'folke/which-key.nvim',
        lazy = true,
    },

}

2. Save the file using Space + w and Invoke Lazy with Space + p to check the status of extension.

3. Install the plugin with Shift + i and move to configure lualine

Lualine Configuration

Create a new file lualine-config.lua in your lua directory.
Add this code in lualine-config.lua and source the file to main configuration.

-- Lualine Configuration 
-- This configuration is mainly implemented from their github repository.

require('lualine').setup {
  options = {
    icons_enabled = true,
    theme = 'auto',
    component_separators = { left = '', right = ''},
    section_separators = { left = '', right = ''},
    disabled_filetypes = {
      statusline = {},
      winbar = {},
    },
    ignore_focus = {},
    always_divide_middle = true,
    globalstatus = false,
    refresh = {
      statusline = 1000,
      tabline = 1000,
      winbar = 1000,
    }
  },
  sections = {
    lualine_a = {'mode'},
    lualine_b = {'branch', 'diff', 'diagnostics'},
    lualine_c = {'filename'},
    lualine_x = {'encoding', 'fileformat', 'filetype'},
    lualine_y = {'progress'},
    lualine_z = {'location'}
  },
  inactive_sections = {
    lualine_a = {},
    lualine_b = {},
    lualine_c = {'filename'},
    lualine_x = {'location'},
    lualine_y = {},
    lualine_z = {}
  },
  tabline = {},
  winbar = {},
  inactive_winbar = {},
  extensions = {}
}

Source File to Main Config

Include lualine-config.lua file in init.lua using require keyword.

require "keymaps"
require "options"
require "lazy-config"
require "lualine-config" -- Added this line to initial file
require "bufferline-config"
require "whichkey"

Restart Neovim to load Lualine.

Folder Structure

Added Lualine-config.lua to lua directory

Lualine Alternatives

Neovim From Scratch

If you want a complete installation and configuration of Neovim from Scratch, then you can head over to my NEOVIM SERIES.
This series is updated regularly, with updates and inclusion of newer plugins which improves the wholesome IDE experience of Neovim.