• Use spaceline.

  Basically it's built on top of powerline and let you build your mode-line by adding several segments one after the other (in both left and right sections).

  For instance, the following segment: (major-mode :face highlight-face) will insert the current major mode and apply a special face to it. This face highlight-face changes following several criterias. You can customize spaceline-modified, spaceline-read-only and spaceline-unmodified faces to fix your issue.

• If you still want to use powerline, you need to do what spaceline already does. That is to check for buffer status and apply the face you want. See buffer-read-only and buffer-modified-p.

Here is how my mode-line looks like:

Normal Modified Read-only Helm

• I use spaceline.

  Basically it's built on top of powerline and let you build your mode-line by adding several segments one after the other (in both left and right sections).

  For instance, the following segment: (major-mode :face highlight-face) will insert the current major mode and apply a special face to it. This face highlight-face changes following several criterias. You can customize spaceline-modified, spaceline-read-only and spaceline-unmodified faces to fix your issue.

• If you still want to use powerline, you need to do what spaceline already does. That is to check for buffer status and apply the face you want. See buffer-read-only and buffer-modified-p.

Here is how my mode-line looks like:

Normal Modified Read-only Helm

• Use spaceline.

  Basically it's built on top of powerline and let you build your mode-line by adding several segments one after the other (in both left and right sections).

  For instance, the following segment: (major-mode :face highlight-face) will insert the current major mode and apply a special face to it. This face highlight-face changes following several criterias. You can customize spaceline-modified, spaceline-read-only and spaceline-unmodified faces to fix your issue.

• If you still want to use powerline, you need to do what spaceline already does. That is to check for buffer status and apply the face you want. See buffer-read-only and buffer-modified-p.

• Use spaceline.

  Basically it's built on top of powerline and let you build your mode-line by adding several segments one after the other (in both left and right sections).

  For instance, the following segment: (major-mode :face highlight-face) will insert the current major mode and apply a special face to it. This face highlight-face changes following several criterias. You can customize spaceline-modified, spaceline-read-only and spaceline-unmodified faces to fix your issue.

• If you still want to use powerline, you need to do what spaceline already does. That is to check for buffer status and apply the face you want. See buffer-read-only and buffer-modified-p.

Here is how my mode-line looks like:

Normal Modified Read-only Helm