How to get transparent statusline in terminal Vim?

Question

I am using Vim in the default terminal of Ubuntu. I want to make the statusline background color be transparent, that is become the color of the Ubuntu terminal background.

I tried adding this to my vimrc:

hi statusline ctermfg=NONE

Also tried:

hi statusline ctermbg=NONE

Neither has any effect. However, if I try any named color like red, it works.

Is there any way to make the statusline background be transparent in terminal Vim?

Answer 1

I have the same problem, what might help is using

hi StatusLine ctermbg=0 cterm=NONE

This depends of course on your general background. What also works is to set a highlight-format:

hi StatusLine ctermbg=none cterm=bold

More light was shed into this problem in this post: https://vi.stackexchange.com/questions/2381/hi-statusline-cterm-none-displays-whitespace-characters