How do I add a visual indicator at the start of soft-wrapped continuation lines to tell them apart from real line starts?

Explanation

When wrap is enabled, long lines visually wrap to the next screen row. By default, Vim gives no visual cue to distinguish a wrapped continuation from an actual new line. Setting showbreak adds a string at the beginning of every continuation row, making the distinction immediately obvious.

How it works

• set showbreak=STRING — displays STRING at the start of every wrapped continuation line
• The string is shown in the display but is not part of the actual buffer content
• A trailing space in the value (e.g., ↪ ) adds breathing room before the text
• The indicator is highlighted with the NonText highlight group by default

Example

With set showbreak=↪\ and a long line:

This is a very long line that wraps
↪ around to the next screen row

The ↪ prefix makes it clear that the second row is a continuation, not a new line.

Tips

• Combine with set breakindent so wrapped lines indent to match the original line's indentation — then showbreak appears after the indent
• Use a simple ASCII fallback for terminals without Unicode: set showbreak=>>
• The showbreak string counts toward the display width, reducing the space available for text on continuation lines
• Clear it with set showbreak= (empty string)
• Check the current value: :set showbreak?