# Troubleshooting on OS X

## I can’t see any fancy symbols, what’s wrong?

- If you’re using iTerm2, please update to this revision or newer. Also make sure that Preferences>Profiles>Text>Non-ASCII Font is the same as your main Font.
- You need to set your `LANG` and `LC_*` environment variables to a UTF-8 locale (e.g. `LANG=en_US.utf8`). Consult your Linux distro’s documentation for information about setting these variables correctly.

## The colors look weird in the default OS X Terminal app!

- The arrows may have the wrong colors if you have changed the “minimum contrast” slider in the color tab of your OS X settings.
- The default OS X Terminal app is known to have some issues with the Powerline colors. Please use another terminal emulator. iTerm2 should work fine.

## The colors look weird in iTerm2!

- The arrows may have the wrong colors if you have changed the “minimum contrast” slider in the color tab of your OS X settings.
- Please disable background transparency to resolve this issue.

## Statusline is getting wrapped to the next line in iTerm2

- Turn off “Treat ambigious-width characters as double width” in Preferences –> Text.
- Alternative: remove fancy dividers (they suck in this case), set ambiwidth to 2.

## I receive a `NameError` when trying to use Powerline with MacVim!

- Please install MacVim using this command:

      brew install macvim --env-std --override-system-vim

  Then install Powerline locally with `pip install --user`, or by running these commands in the `powerline` directory:

      ./setup.py build
      ./setup.py install --user

## I receive an `ImportError` when trying to use Powerline on OS X!

- This is caused by an invalid `sys.path` when using system vim and system Python. Please try to select another Python distribution:

      sudo port select python python27-apple

- See issue #39 for a discussion and other possible solutions for this issue.

## I receive “FSEventStreamStart: register_with_server: ERROR” with status_colors

This is a known libuv issue that happens if one is trying to watch too many files. It should be fixed in libuv-0.12. Until then it is suggested to either disable `status_colors` (from `powerline.segments.common.vcs.branch()`) or choose stat-based watcher (will have effectively the same effect as disabling `status_colors`).