vim is rendering strangely on first render

[nbelakovski]

Type: Bug

This started happening recently, in the last month or so, but when I start vim in the integrated terminal, the text shows up but any non-text area is rendered in black, see screenshot.

This is what I expected it to look like:

There are a number of things which make it go away, including Ctrl+L, scrolling down, Ctrl+F, ":set background=dark", but it always shows up on the first render. I even tried adding that set command in my .vimrc but no luck. Any thoughts on things I can do to debug this further or try to address it?

VS Code version: Code 1.100.2 (Universal) (848b80a, 2025-05-14T21:47:40.416Z)
OS version: Darwin arm64 23.5.0
Modes:

System Info

Item	Value
CPUs	Apple M2 (8 x 2400)
GPU Status	2d_canvas: enabled canvas_oop_rasterization: enabled_on direct_rendering_display_compositor: disabled_off_ok gpu_compositing: enabled multiple_raster_threads: enabled_on opengl: enabled_on rasterization: enabled raw_draw: disabled_off_ok skia_graphite: disabled_off video_decode: enabled video_encode: enabled webgl: enabled webgl2: enabled webgpu: enabled webnn: disabled_off
Load (avg)	5, 4, 4
Memory (System)	24.00GB (0.07GB free)
Process Argv	--disable-extensions --crash-reporter-id bb19dc83-da5c-4528-a2ce-7cf98d2822e0
Screen Reader	no
VM	0%

Extensions disabled

A/B Experiments

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[albertosantini]

Try the setting "terminal.integrated.windowsUseConptyDll": true

[nbelakovski]

I'm on mac, but I gave it a try anyway, no luck. I also tried gpuacceleration on/off, also no effect, and looked through other terminal settings but didn't see any that looked relevant.

[Far0n]

Try the setting "terminal.integrated.windowsUseConptyDll": true

didn't do the trick for me on windows either.

[Far0n]

@nbelakovski here is a small workaround based on your tinkering with :set background=dark:

either run the set background or colorscheme command via autocmd, e.g. try one of these lines in your .vimrc:

autocmd VimEnter * colorscheme <colorscheme-name>

or

autocmd VimEnter * set background=dark