Powerline: how to show whether buffer is modified more prominently

Question

I've just installed powerline to update my emacs looks for the 21. century. I like it, but I'm bothered that the modified-buffer indicator is just a simple, barely discernible asterisk.

Is there a way to make the fact that the buffer is modified to be more eye-catching?

My config up to now is very simple:

(use-package powerline
  :config
  (setq powerline-display-buffer-size nil)
  (setq powerline-display-mule-info nil)
  (setq powerline-display-hud nil)
  (which-function-mode)
  (when (display-graphic-p)
    (powerline-default-theme)))

Is there a simple way to change certain faces without creating custom poweline themes (I also don't like the color of the (which-function-mode) output.

Thank you very much!

Answer 1

• I use spaceline.

  Basically it's built on top of powerline and let you build your mode-line by adding several segments one after the other (in both left and right sections).

  For instance, the following segment: (major-mode :face highlight-face) will insert the current major mode and apply a special face to it. This face highlight-face changes following several criterias. You can customize spaceline-modified, spaceline-read-only and spaceline-unmodified faces to fix your issue.

• If you still want to use powerline, you need to do what spaceline already does. That is to check for buffer status and apply the face you want. See buffer-read-only and buffer-modified-p.

Here is how my mode-line looks like:

Normal Modified Read-only Helm

Answer 2

I had the same issue. Here is my spaceline configuration in totality to achieve the modified buffer objective:

  (require 'spaceline-config)
  (spaceline-emacs-theme)
  (setq spaceline-highlight-face-func 'spaceline-highlight-face-modified)

Then customize the face, say, via M-x customize or:

(custom-set-faces
 '(spaceline-modified ((t (:background "OrangeRed" :foreground "#3E3D31"
                                       :inherit (quote mode-line))))))