gitsigns is a Neovim plugin which adds a wonderfully subtle colour annotation in the left-hand gutter to reflect changes in the buffer since the last git commit1.

My long-term habit with Vim and Git is to frequently background Vim (^Z) to invoke the git command directly and then foreground Vim again (fg). Over the last few years I've been trying more and more to call vim-fugitive from within Vim instead. (I still do rebases and most merges the old-fashioned way). For the most part Gitsigns is a nice passive addition to that, but it can also do a lot of useful things that Fugitive also does. Previewing changed hunks in a little floating window, in particular when resolving an awkward merge conflict, is very handy.

An example screenshot of the Gitsigns plugin

The above picture shows it in action. I've changed two lines and added another three in the top-left buffer. Gitsigns tries to choose colours from the currently active colour scheme (in this case, tender)

  1. by default Gitsigns shows changes since the last commit, as git diff does, but you can easily switch out the base from which it compares.↩