MacVim not loading plugins from my ~/.vim directory #1641

Activity

1. eirnym commented on Apr 16, 2026

   

   eirnym

   on Apr 16, 2026

   Contributor

   More actions

   Thank you for an issue,

   I'd like to remind, that MacVim is just a GUI for Vim, so if something has been changed in Vim core will go to MacVim as well.

   Could you confirm that terminal version of MacVim is loading or not loading plugins?

   Version of /usr/bin/vim is quite old and loading rules might be changed in Vim core.

   To confirm if further it's with a while to try recent vim version from Homebrew or whatever port manager you use.

   PS: after reading your profile files, it's better to use a plugin manager like VimPlug
2. markaudacity commented on Apr 18, 2026

   

   markaudacity

   on Apr 18, 2026

   Author

   More actions

   Upon further poking around, I've verified that MacVim is not loading anything from my ~/.vim other than vimrc and gvimrc. Do I need to manually add all the subfolders in settings for it to load the rest of the contents of ~/.vim?
3. eirnym commented on Apr 19, 2026

   

   eirnym

   on Apr 19, 2026

   Last edited by eirnym

   Contributor

   More actions

   Changes could've been made in Vim Core and it's probably is not specific to MacVim. MacVim is a GUI for Vim, not Vim itself. Some minor changes have to be made to Vim Core, so this is why this is a separate repository.

   My .vim/vimrc file contains following code (all of my plugins are held in repositories, including my private). the s:InstallVimPlug is not a part of an official minimal installation, but was listed somewhere back in the day (way before AI was first introduced).

   function! s:InstallVimPlug()
       " Automatically Installs VimPlug if missing and do first plugin installation.
       if empty(glob('~/.vim/autoload/plug.vim'))
         silent !curl -fLo ~/.vim/autoload/plug.vim --create-dirs
           \ https://raw.githubusercontent.com/junegunn/vim-plug/master/plug.vim
         autocmd VimEnter * PlugInstall --sync | source $MYVIMRC
       endif
   endfunction
   
   call s:InstallVimPlug()
   call plug#begin('~/.vim/plugged')
   
   " Plug 'plugin/repo'
   " see more information in the official repository how to manage it
   
   call plug#end()