The goal of nvim-treesitter is both to provide a simple and easy way to use the interface for tree-sitter in Neovim and to provide some basic functionality such as highlighting based on it:

Traditional highlighting (left) vs Treesitter-based highlighting (right). More examples can be found in our gallery.

Warning: Treesitter and nvim-treesitter highlighting are an experimental feature of nightly versions of Neovim. Please consider the experience with this plug-in as experimental until Neovim 0.5 is released! You can find the current roadmap here. The roadmap and all features of this plugin are open to change, and any suggestion will be highly appreciated!

Nvim-treesitter is based on three interlocking features: language parsers, queries, and modules, where modules provide features – e.g., highlighting – based on queries for syntax objects extracted from a given buffer by language parsers. Users will generally only need to interact with parsers and modules as explained in the next section. For more detailed information on setting these up, see "Advanced setup".

Table of contents

• Quickstart
• Supported languages
• Available modules
• Advanced setup
• Extra features
• Troubleshooting

Quickstart

Requirements

• Neovim nightly
• tar and curl in your path (or alternativly git)
• A C compiler in your path and libstdc++ installed (Windows users please read this!).

Installation

You can install nvim-treesitter with your favorite package manager (or using the native package feature of vim, see :h packages).

E.g., if you are using vim-plug, put this in your init.vim file:

Plug 'nvim-treesitter/nvim-treesitter', {'do': ':TSUpdate'}  " We recommend updating the parsers on update

Language parsers

Treesitter uses a different parser for every language, which needs to be generated via tree-sitter-cli from a grammar.js file, then compiled to a .so library that needs to be placed in neovim's runtimepath (typically under parser/{language}.so). To simplify this, nvim-treesitter provides commands to automate this process. If the language is already supported by nvim-treesitter, you can install it with

:TSInstall {language}

This command supports tab expansion. You can also get a list of all available languages and their installation status with :TSInstallInfo. Parsers not on this list can be added manually by following the steps described under "Adding parsers" below.

If you update nvim-treesitter and want to make sure the parser is at the latest compatible version (as specified in nvim-treesitter's lockfile.json), use :TSUpdate {language}. To update all parsers unconditionally, use :TSUpdate all or just :TSUpdate.

Modules

Each module provides a distinct tree-sitter-based feature such as highlighting, indentation, or folding; see :h nvim-treesitter-modules or "Available modules" below for a list of modules and their options.

All modules are disabled by default and need to be activated explicitly in your init.vim, e.g., via

lua <<EOF
require'nvim-treesitter.configs'.setup {
  ensure_installed = "maintained", -- one of "all", "maintained" (parsers with maintainers), or a list of languages
  highlight = {
    enable = true,              -- false will disable the whole extension
    disable = { "c", "rust" },  -- list of language that will be disabled
  },
}
EOF

Each module can also be enabled or disabled interactively through the following commands:

:TSBufEnable {module} " enable module on current buffer
:TSBufDisable {module} " disable module on current buffer
:TSEnableAll {module} [{ft}] " enable module on every buffer. If filetype is specified, enable only for this filetype.
:TSDisableAll {module} [{ft}] " disable module on every buffer. If filetype is specified, disable only for this filetype.
:TSModuleInfo [{module}] " list information about modules state for each filetype

Check :h nvim-treesitter-commands for a list of all available commands. It may be necessary to reload the buffer (e.g., via :e) after enabling a module interactively.

Supported languages

For nvim-treesitter to support a specific feature for a specific language requires both a parser for that language and an appropriate language-specific query file for that feature.

The following is a list of languages for which a parser can be installed through :TSInstall; a checked box means that nvim-treesitter also contains queries at least for the highlight module.

We are looking for maintainers to add more parsers and to write query files for their languages.

• [x] bash (maintained by @TravonteD)
• [x] c (maintained by @vigoux)
• [x] c_sharp (maintained by @svermeulen)
• [x] clojure (maintained by @sogaiu)
• [x] comment (maintained by @stsewd)
• [x] cpp (maintained by @theHamsta)
• [x] css (maintained by @TravonteD)
• [x] dart (maintained by @Akin909)
• [x] devicetree (maintained by @jedrzejboczar)
• [ ] elm
• [x] erlang (maintained by @ostera)
• [x] fennel (maintained by @TravonteD)
• [x] Godot (gdscript) (maintained by not @tjdevries)
• [x] Glimmer and Ember (maintained by @alexlafroscia)
• [x] go (maintained by @theHamsta, @WinWisely268)
• [x] graphql (maintained by @bkegley)
• [ ] haskell
• [x] html (maintained by @TravonteD)
• [x] java (maintained by @p00f)
• [x] javascript (maintained by @steelsojka)
• [x] jsdoc (maintained by @steelsojka)
• [x] json (maintained by @steelsojka)
• [x] JSON with comments (maintained by @WhyNotHugo)
• [x] julia (maintained by @mroavi, @theHamsta)
• [x] kotlin (maintained by @tormodatt)
• [x] ledger (maintained by @cbarrete)
• [x] lua (maintained by @vigoux)
• [x] nix (maintained by @leo60228)
• [x] ocaml (maintained by @undu)
• [x] ocaml_interface (maintained by @undu)
• [x] ocamllex (maintained by @undu)
• [x] php (maintained by @tk-shirasaka)
• [x] python (maintained by @stsewd, @theHamsta)
• [x] ql (maintained by @pwntester)
• [x] Tree-sitter query language (maintained by @steelsojka)
• [x] r (maintained by @jimhester)
• [x] regex (maintained by @theHamsta)
• [x] rst (maintained by @stsewd)
• [x] ruby (maintained by @TravonteD)
• [x] rust (maintained by @vigoux)
• [ ] scala
• [x] sparql (maintained by @bonabeavis)
• [x] supercollider (maintained by @madskjeldgaard)
• [x] svelte (maintained by @elianiva)
• [ ] swift
• [x] teal (maintained by @euclidianAce)
• [x] toml (maintained by @tk-shirasaka)
• [ ] tsx
• [x] turtle (maintained by @bonabeavis)
• [x] typescript (maintained by @steelsojka)
• [x] verilog (maintained by @zegervdv)
• [x] vue (maintained by @WhyNotHugo)
• [ ] yaml

Available modules

Modules provide the top-level features of nvim-treesitter. The following is a list of modules included in nvim-treesitter and their configuration via init.vim (where multiple modules can be combined in a single call to setup). Note that not all modules work for all languages (depending on the queries available for them). Additional modules can be provided as external plugins.

Highlight

Consistent syntax highlighting.

lua <<EOF
require'nvim-treesitter.configs'.setup {
  highlight = {
    enable = true,
    custom_captures = {
      -- Highlight the @foo.bar capture group with the "Identifier" highlight group.
      ["foo.bar"] = "Identifier",
    },
  },
}
EOF

Incremental selection

Incremental selection based on the named nodes from the grammar.

lua <<EOF
require'nvim-treesitter.configs'.setup {
  incremental_selection = {
    enable = true,
    keymaps = {
      init_selection = "gnn",
      node_incremental = "grn",
      scope_incremental = "grc",
      node_decremental = "grm",
    },
  },
}
EOF

Indentation

Tree-sitter based indentation.

lua <<EOF
require'nvim-treesitter.configs'.setup {
  indent = {
    enable = true
  }
}
EOF

Folding

Tree-sitter based folding.

set foldmethod=expr
set foldexpr=nvim_treesitter#foldexpr()

This will respect your foldnestmax setting.

Advanced setup

Adding parsers

If you have a parser that is not on the list of supported languages (either as a repository on Github or in a local directory), you can add it manually for use by nvim-treesitter as follows:

1. Clone the repository or create a new project in, say, ~/projects/tree-sitter-zimbu. Make sure that the tree-sitter-cli executable is installed and in your path; see https://tree-sitter.github.io/tree-sitter/creating-parsers#installation for installation instructions.
2. Run tree-sitter generate in this directory (followed by tree-sitter test for good measure).
3. Add the following snippet to your init.vim:

lua <<EOF
local parser_config = require "nvim-treesitter.parsers".get_parser_configs()
parser_config.zimbu = {
  install_info = {
    url = "~/projects/tree-sitter-zimbu", -- local path or git repo
    files = {"src/parser.c"}
  },
  filetype = "zu", -- if filetype does not agrees with parser name
  used_by = {"bar", "baz"} -- additional filetypes that use this parser
}
EOF

4. Start nvim and :TSInstall zimbu.

You can also skip step 2 and use :TSInstallFromGrammar zimbu to install directly from a grammar.js in the top-level directory specified by url. Once the parser is installed, you can update it (from the latest revision of the main branch if url is a Github repository) with :TSUpdate zimbu.

Update parsers used_by

Sometimes needs to use some parser for different filetype.

Add the following snippet to your init.vim:

lua <<EOF
local parser_config = require "nvim-treesitter.parsers".get_parser_configs()
parser_config.typescript.used_by = "javascriptflow"
EOF

Adding queries

Queries are what nvim-treesitter uses to extract informations from the syntax tree; they are located in the queries/{language}/* runtime directories (like the queries folder of this plugin), e.g., queries/{language}/{locals,highlights,textobjects}.scm. Other modules may require additional queries such as folding.scm.

nvim-treesitter considers queries as any runtime file (see :h rtp), i.e.,

• if the file is in any after/queries/ folder, then it will be used to extend the already defined queries.
• Otherwise, it will be used as a base to define the query, the first query found (with the highest priority) will be the only one to be used.

This hybrid approach is the most standard way; in this case

• if you want to rewrite (or write) a query, don't use after/queries;
• if you want to override a part of a query (only one match for example), use the after/queries directory.

Adding modules

If you wish you write your own module, you need to support

• tree-sitter language detection support;
• attaching and detaching to buffers;
• all nvim-treesitter commands.

At the top level, you can use the define_modules function to define one or more modules or module groups:

lua <<EOF
require'nvim-treesitter'.define_modules {
  my_cool_plugin = {
    attach = function(bufnr, lang)
      -- Do cool stuff here
    end,
    detach = function(bufnr)
      -- Undo cool stuff here
    end,
    is_supported = function(lang)
      -- Check if the language is supported
    end
  }
}
EOF

with the following properties:

• module_path specifies a require path (string) that exports a module with an attach and detach function. This is not required if the functions are on this definition.
• enable determines if the module is enabled by default. This is usually overridden by the user.
• disable takes a list of languages that this module is disabled for. This is usually overridden by the user.
• is_supported takes a function that takes a language and determines if this module supports that language.
• attach takes a function that attaches to a buffer. This is required if module_path is not provided.
• detach takes a function that detaches from a buffer. This is required if module_path is not provided.

Extra features

Statusline indicator

echo nvim_treesitter#statusline(90)  " 90 can be any length
module->expression_statement->call->identifier

Utilities

You can get some utility functions with

local ts_utils = require 'nvim-treesitter.ts_utils'

Check :h nvim-treesitter-utils for more information.

Troubleshooting

Before doing anything, make sure you have the latest version of this plugin and run :checkhealth nvim_treesitter. It can also help to update the parsers via :TSUpdate.

Feature X does not work for {language}...

First, check the ## {language} parser healthcheck section of :checkhealth for any warning. If there is one, it's highly likely that this is the cause of the problem. If everything is okay, then it might be an actual error.

In that case, feel free to open an issue here.

I get module 'vim.treesitter.query' not found

Make sure you have the latest nightly version of Neovim.

I get Error detected while processing .../plugin/nvim-treesitter.vim every time I open Neovim

This is probably due to a change in a parser's grammar or its queries. Try updating the parser that you suspect has changed (:TSUpdate {language}) or all of them (:TSUpdate). If the error persists after updating all parsers, please open an issue.

I experience weird highlighting issues similar to #78

This is a well known issue, which arises when the tree and the buffer have gotten out of sync. As this is an upstream issue, we don't have any definite fix. To get around this, you can force reparsing the buffer with

:write | edit | TSBufEnable highlight

This will save, restore and enable highlighting for the current buffer.

I experience bugs when using nvim-treesitter's foldexpr similar to #194

This might happen, and is known to happen, with vim-clap. To avoid these kind of errors, please use setlocal instead of set for the respective filetypes.

I run into errors like module 'nvim-treesitter.configs' not found at startup

This is because of rtp management in nvim, adding packadd nvim-treesitter should fix the issue.