CoffeeMode in Neovim

Enso, a writing tool, has a beautiful little feature called CoffeeMode. It enables writing privately in public places. Anything we write appears as a •.

I was sitting in a library recently, scribbling my random thoughts in my jrnl. This CoffeeMode sounds perfect for such moments (such as on airplanes). Interestingly, it was easy to implement this mode in Neovim using the conceal feature.

:syntax match CoffeeShop /[a-z]/ conceal cchar=•
:set conceallevel=2
# might need to do this too active it in both normal and insert mode
# this allows us to see the hidden text in visual mode
:set concealcursor=ni

Vim has a conceal feature to hide / conceal few characters in the editor. Such as * in markdown files. Using :syntax command, we specify the regex to be concealed with the cchar character.