How to highlight current line only in selected window?

Question

Q: is there a way to have hl-line-mode highlight the current line only in the selected window?

When I have multiple windows showing buffers with hl-line-mode on, it is difficult to tell, at a glance, which window is current.

I have the variable cursor-in-non-selected-windows set to nil to show the cursor only in the current window, but that visual cue is swamped by the highlighted lines in the windows.

Is there a similar setting to allow me to have hl-line-mode show the highlighted line only in the current window? Even better, is there a way to give the highlighted lines a different face when they're in inactive windows (analogous to mode-line-inactive)?

PS: yes, I can look at the mode line to tell which window is active, but doing so takes my eyes away from what I'm doing and breaks my concentration.

Answer 1

You can set hl-line-sticky-flag to nil

hl-line-sticky-flag is a variable defined in hl-line.el.

Non-nil means the HL-Line mode highlight appears in all windows. Otherwise Hl-Line mode will highlight only in the selected window. Setting this variable takes effect the next time you use the command hl-line-mode to turn Hl-Line mode on.

This variable has no effect in Global Highlight Line mode. For that, use global-hl-line-sticky-flag.