Did you know Vim has a client-server model baked in? Of course it does. If you run

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vim --servername LOVE

, then in another terminal something like

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vim --servername LOVE --remote-send "<Cmd>colorscheme peachpuff<CR>"

, you’ll find your Vim terminal switch to the creamy default theme all true gangsters love - without you actually having to do anything.

I frequently flip between a US- and Finnish-based keyboard while doing my language studies. I already had a tiny shell script in place which plays a seventh major chord every time they switch, courtesy of Sway WM:

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bindsym $mod+Space exec --no-startup-id ~/.config/sway/switch_layout.sh

So when I found this out, I realized I could very quickly make my life easier by just adding something like

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if [[ "$layout" == "Finnish" ]]; then
  vim --servername LOVE --remote-send "<Cmd>colorscheme peachpuff<CR>" &
elif [[ "$layout" == "English (US)" ]]; then
  vim --servername LOVE --remote-send "<Cmd>colorscheme default<CR>" &
fi

Studying or not, I basically always have Vim open somehwere in my field of vision. This turns out to be a very useful extra way to cut down on error rates, like when I mean to type ö instead of ;.

The complete switch_layout.sh script

This is a little more complex, as I often have multiple Vim sessions open simultaneously, and they all get their own server names. The xargs stuff is just to make sure the command gets sent to all of them.

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#!/bin/bash

VIM_SERVER="VIM"

swaymsg input '1:1:AT_Translated_Set_2_keyboard' xkb_switch_layout next

layout=$(swaymsg -t get_inputs | jq '.[].xkb_active_layout_name' | sort -u | head --lines=1 | tr -d '"')

A=440
C_SHARP=554.37
E=659.25
G_SHARP=830.61

function change_vim_color() {
  vim --serverlist | grep "^VIM" | xargs -I _ -- vim --servername _ --remote-send "$1"
}

if [[ "$layout" == "Finnish" ]]; then
  change_vim_color "<Cmd>colorscheme blue<CR>" &

  # ascending seventh major
  play -n synth 0.2 sine $A vol -30dB &
  play -n synth 0.2 sine $C_SHARP vol -30dB &
  sleep 0.2
  play -n synth 0.2 sine $E vol -30dB &
  play -n synth 0.2 sine $G_SHARP vol -30dB &


elif [[ "$layout" == "English (US)" ]]; then
  change_vim_color "<Cmd>colorscheme habamax<CR>" &

  # descending seventh major
  play -n synth 0.2 sine $G_SHARP vol -30dB &
  play -n synth 0.2 sine $E vol -30dB &
  sleep 0.2
  play -n synth 0.2 sine $C_SHARP vol -30dB &
  play -n synth 0.2 sine $A vol -30dB &

fi

# Send notification with the current layout
notify-send -u low "Switching keyboard layouts: $layout"