How do you make vim unhighlight what you searched for?

I search for "nurple" in a file. I found it, great. But now, every occurrence of "nurple" is rendered in sick black on yellow. Forever.

Forever, that is, until I search for something I know won't be found, such as "asdhfalsdflajdflakjdf" simply so it clears the previous search highlighting.

Can't I just hit a magic key to kill the highlights when I'm done searching?

From stackoverflow mbac32768

• :noh will do the trick. (short for nohighlight)

  From Lee

• Just put this in your .vimrc

  " <Ctrl-l> redraws the screen and removes any search highlighting.
  nnoremap <silent> <C-l> :nohl<CR><C-l>
  

  paxdiablo : Oooh, that's a goodie. I've been using /@@ which works as long as there's no @@ in my files. I must modify my vimrc NOW!

  Amit : This is great, cured a lot of my headaches! I think ,it's better to use the full command in vimrc (:nohlsearch) to avoid conflicts in future.
  From Lucas S.

•       *:noh* *:nohlsearch*
  :noh[lsearch]    Stop the highlighting for the 'hlsearch' option.  It
        is automatically turned back on when using a search
        command, or setting the 'hlsearch' option.
        This command doesn't work in an autocommand, because
        the highlighting state is saved and restored when
        executing autocommands |autocmd-searchpat|.
        Same thing for when invoking a user function.
  

  Found it just under the :help #

  Which i keep hitting all the time which highlights all the words on the current page like the current one :)

  From Kent Fredric

• You could put this in your .vimrc file to prevent hilighting alltogether, if you don't find it useful (like me).

  set nohlsearch
  

  From Daniel Bruce

• There is hlsearch and nohlsearch. :help hlsearch will provide more information. If you want to bind F12 to toggle it on/off you can use this:

  map     <F12>   :nohlsearch<CR>
  imap    <F12>   <ESC>:nohlsearch<CR>i
  vmap    <F12>   <ESC>:nohlsearch<CR>gv
  

  From Jeffrey Vanneste

• /lkjasdf has always been faster than :noh for me

  Pi : Doing this in front of someone who knew Vim better than I did is how I learned about :nohls.
  From jon

• Then I prefer this:

  map  <F12> :set hls!<CR>
  imap <F12> <ESC>:set hls!<CR>a
  vmap <F12> <ESC>:set hls!<CR>gv
  

  And why? Because it toggles the switch: if highlight is on, then pressing turns it off. And vica cersa. HTH.

  Max : This can also be accomplished with the "invhlsearch" setting.
  From Zsolt Botykai

• I search so often that I've found it useful to map the underscore key to remove the search highlight:

  nnoremap <silent> _ :nohl<CR>
  

  From $pageUsers[$post.author].name

• I have this in my .vimrc:

  nnoremap ; :set invhlsearch<CR>
  

  This way, ; will toggle search highlighting. Normally, the ; key repeats the latest t/T/f/F command, but I never really used that functionality. I find this setting much more useful, because I can change search highlighting on and off very quickly, and easily get a sense of where my search results are, at a glance.

  From Max