Vim is one of the most used and well-known text editors on Linux and other Unix-based operating systems. It is free and open-source software, based on the original Vi editor (Vim stands for Vi IMproved) and mainly developed by Bram Moolenaar. The editor can be set up by editing the ~/.vimrc configuration file, and by using a vast range of plugins. In this article we see how to improve and customize the Vim status bar by installing Powerline, a nice plugin written in Python which can be also used to customize the Bash and Zsh shell prompts.