Color output in console
This page was created to consolidate colorization of CLI outputs.
Applications
diff
diffutils from version 3.4 includes the --color
option (GNU mailing list).
$ alias diff='diff --color=auto'
grep
The --color=auto
option enables color highlighting. Color codes are emitted only on standard output; not in pipes or redirection.
Color output in grep is also useful with regexp tasks.
Use an alias to permanently enable this option:
alias grep='grep --color=auto'
The GREP_COLORS
variable is used to define colors, and it configures various parts of highlighting. To change the colors, find the needed ANSI escape sequence and apply it. See grep(1) for more information.
The -n
option includes file line numbers in the output.
ip
ip(8) command from iproute2 supports colors with -c
option. You can use an alias to enable colored output. When using auto
parameter, colored output will be enabled only when stdout is a terminal.
alias ip='ip -color=auto'
less
Environment variables
Add the following lines to your shell configuration file:
export LESS=-R export LESS_TERMCAP_mb=$'\E[1;31m' # begin blink export LESS_TERMCAP_md=$'\E[1;36m' # begin bold export LESS_TERMCAP_me=$'\E[0m' # reset bold/blink export LESS_TERMCAP_so=$'\E[01;44;33m' # begin reverse video export LESS_TERMCAP_se=$'\E[0m' # reset reverse video export LESS_TERMCAP_us=$'\E[1;32m' # begin underline export LESS_TERMCAP_ue=$'\E[0m' # reset underline # and so on
Change the values (ANSI escape code) as you like. This blog post and the page Bash/Prompt customization also help.
LESS_TERMCAP_xx
variables are currently undocumented in less(1). For a detailed explanation, see this answer.Reading from stdin
~/.bashrc
or ~/.zshrc
, as the below is based on export LESS=R
When you run a command and pipe its standard output (stdout) to less for a paged view (e.g. pacman -Qe | less
), you may find that the output is no longer colored. This is usually because the program tries to detect if its stdout is an interactive terminal, in which case it prints colored text, and otherwise prints uncolored text. This is good behaviour when you want to redirect stdout to a file, e.g. pacman -Qe > pkglst-backup.txt
, but less suited when you want to view output in less
.
Some programs provide an option to disable the interactive tty detection:
# dmesg --color=always | less
In case that the program does not provide any similar option, it is possible to trick the program into thinking its stdout is an interactive terminal with the following utilities:
- ColorThis — Force colored output of a program by running it within a (group of) pty, support forwarding stdin.
- stdoutisatty — A small program which catches the
isatty
function call.
- https://github.com/lilydjwg/stdoutisatty. || stdoutisatty-gitAUR
- Example:
stdoutisatty program | less
- unbuffer — A tclsh script comes with expect, it invokes desired program within a pty.
- http://expect.sourceforge.net/example/unbuffer.man.html || expect
- Example:
unbuffer program | less
Alternatively, using zpty module from zsh: [1]
~/.zshrc
zmodload zsh/zpty pty() { zpty pty-${UID} ${1+$@} if [[ ! -t 1 ]];then setopt local_traps trap '' INT fi zpty -r pty-${UID} zpty -d pty-${UID} } ptyless() { pty $@ | less }
Usage:
$ ptyless program
To pipe it to other pager (less in this example):
$ pty program | less
ls
The --color=auto
option enables color highlighting. Color codes are emitted only on standard output; not in pipes or redirection.
Use an alias to permanently enable this option:
alias ls='ls --color=auto'
The LS_COLORS
variable is used to define colors, and it configures various parts of highlighting. Use the dircolors(1) command to set it.
--color
option may incur a noticeable performance penalty when ls is run in a directory with very many entries. The default settings require ls to stat(1) every single file it lists. However, if you would like most of the file-type coloring but can live without the other coloring options (e.g. executable, orphan, sticky, other-writable, capability), use dircolors to set the LS_COLORS
environment variable like this:
eval $(dircolors -p | perl -pe 's/^((CAP|S[ET]|O[TR]|M|E)\w+).*/$1 00/' | dircolors -)
See ls(1) for more information.
man
To enable colored man
, two main pagers, less
and most
, are hacked here.
Using less
See #less for a more detailed description.
For bash or zsh, add the following less
wrapper function to ~/.bashrc
or ~/.zshrc
:
man() { LESS_TERMCAP_md=$'\e[01;31m' \ LESS_TERMCAP_me=$'\e[0m' \ LESS_TERMCAP_se=$'\e[0m' \ LESS_TERMCAP_so=$'\e[01;44;33m' \ LESS_TERMCAP_ue=$'\e[0m' \ LESS_TERMCAP_us=$'\e[01;32m' \ command man "$@" }
For Fish you could accomplish this with:
~/.config/fish/config.fish
set -xU LESS_TERMCAP_md (printf "\e[01;31m") set -xU LESS_TERMCAP_me (printf "\e[0m") set -xU LESS_TERMCAP_se (printf "\e[0m") set -xU LESS_TERMCAP_so (printf "\e[01;44;33m") set -xU LESS_TERMCAP_ue (printf "\e[0m") set -xU LESS_TERMCAP_us (printf "\e[01;32m")
Remember to source your config or restart your shell to make the changes take effect.
Using most
The basic function of 'most' is similar to less
and more
, but it has a smaller feature set. Configuring most to use colors is easier than using less, but additional configuration is necessary to make most behave like less.
Install the most package.
Edit /etc/man_db.conf
, uncomment the pager definition and change it to:
DEFINE pager most -s
Test the new setup by typing:
$ man whatever_man_page
Modifying the color values requires editing ~/.mostrc
(creating the file if it is not present) or editing /etc/most.conf
for system-wide changes. Example ~/.mostrc
:
% Color settings color normal lightgray black color status yellow blue color underline yellow black color overstrike brightblue black
A list of all keybindings may be found at /usr/share/doc/most/most-fun.txt
. To get a basic less
/vim
-like configuration, you can copy /usr/share/doc/most/lesskeys.rc
to ~/.mostrc
. The lesskeys rc included with most does not include 'g' or 'G', so you will also have to add these lines to ~/.mostrc
:
setkey bob "g" setkey eob "G" setkey page_down "d" setkey page_up "u"
You may also want to set the goto_line
keybinding in the rc if you don't like the default of 'J'.
Another example showing keybindings similar to less
(jump to line is set to 'J'):
% less-like keybindings unsetkey "^K" unsetkey "g" unsetkey "G" unsetkey ":" setkey next_file ":n" setkey find_file ":e" setkey next_file ":p" setkey toggle_options ":o" setkey toggle_case ":c" setkey delete_file ":d" setkey exit ":q" setkey bob "g" setkey eob "G" setkey down "e" setkey down "E" setkey down "j" setkey down "^N" setkey up "y" setkey up "^Y" setkey up "k" setkey up "^P" setkey up "^K" setkey page_down "f" setkey page_down "^F" setkey page_up "b" setkey page_up "^B" setkey other_window "z" setkey other_window "w" setkey search_backward "?" setkey bob "p" setkey goto_mark "'" setkey find_file "E" setkey edit "v"
Using X resources
A quick way to add color to manual pages viewed on xterm/uxterm
or rxvt-unicode is to modify ~/.Xresources
.
xterm
*VT100.colorBDMode: true *VT100.colorBD: red *VT100.colorULMode: true *VT100.colorUL: cyan
which replaces the decorations with the colors. Also add:
*VT100.veryBoldColors: 6
if you want colors and decorations (bold or underline) at the same time. See xterm(1) for a description of the veryBoldColors
resource.
rxvt-unicode
URxvt.colorIT: #87af5f URxvt.colorBD: #d7d7d7 URxvt.colorUL: #87afd7
Run:
$ xrdb -load ~/.Xresources
Launch a new xterm/uxterm
or rxvt-unicode
and you should see colorful man pages.
This combination puts colors to bold and underlined words in xterm/uxterm
or to bold, underlined, and italicized text in rxvt-unicode
. You can play with different combinations of these attributes (see the sources[dead link 2020-03-28 ⓘ] of this item).
pacman
Pacman has a color option. Uncomment the Color
line in /etc/pacman.conf
.
Wrappers
Universal wrappers
(most of them outdated but still functioning)
They go with multiple preconfigured presets that can be changed, and new can be created/contributed.
- rainbow — Colorize commands output or STDIN using patterns.
Presets: df, diff, env, host, ifconfig, java-stack-trace, jboss, jonas, md5sum, mvn2, mvn3, ping, tomcat, top, traceroute.
- grc — Yet another colouriser for beautifying your logfiles or output of commands.
Presets: cat, cvs, df, digg, gcc, g++, ls, ifconfig, make, mount, mtr, netstat, ping, ps, tail, traceroute, wdiff, blkid, du, dnf, docker, docker-machine, env, id, ip, iostat, last, lsattr, lsblk, lspci, lsmod, lsof, getfacl, getsebool, ulimit, uptime, nmap, fdisk, findmnt, free, semanage, sar, ss, sysctl, systemctl, stat, showmount, tune2fs and tcpdump.
- colorlogs — Colorize commands output or STDIN using patterns.
Presets: logs, git status, ant, maven.
- https://github.com/memorius/colorlogs || not packaged? search in AUR
- cope — A colourful wrapper for terminal programs.
Presets: acpi, arp, cc, df, dprofpp, fdisk, free, g++, gcc, id, ifconfig, ls, lspci, lsusb, make, md5sum, mpc, netstat, nm, nmap, nocope, ping, pmap, ps, readelf, route, screen, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha256sum, sha384sum, sha512sum, shasum, socklist, stat, strace, tcpdump, tracepath, traceroute, w, wget, who, xrandr.
- cw — A non-intrusive real-time ANSI color wrapper for common unix-based commands. Wraps file which can cause issues.
Presets: arp, arping, auth.log@, blockdev, cal, cksum, clock, configure, cpuinfo@, crontab@, cw-pipe, cw-test.cgi, date, df, diff, dig, dmesg, du, env, figlet, file, find, finger, free, fstab@, fuser, g++, gcc, group@, groups, hdparm, hexdump, host, hosts@, id, ifconfig, inittab@, iptables, last, lastlog, lsattr, lsmod, lsof, ltrace-color, make, md5sum, meminfo@, messages@, mount, mpg123, netstat, nfsstat, nmap, nslookup, objdump, passwd@, ping, pmap, pmap_dump, praliases, profile@, protocols@, ps, pstree, quota, quotastats, resolv.conf@, route, routel, sdiff, services@, showmount, smbstatus, stat, strace-color, sysctl, syslog, tar, tcpdump, tracepath, traceroute, umount, uname, uptime, users, vmstat, w, wc, whereis, who, xferlog.
- ccze — A fast log colorizer written in C, intended to be a drop-in replacement for colorize
Libraries for colorizing an output
- libtextstyle — A C library for styling text output to terminals
- ruby-rainbow — Rainbow is extension to ruby's String class adding support for colorizing text on ANSI terminal
- python-blessings — A thin, practical wrapper around terminal coloring, styling, and positioning
- lolcat — Ruby program that makes the output colorful like a rainbow
Application specific
Compilers
- colorgcc — A Perl wrapper to colorize the output of compilers with warning/error messages matching the gcc output format
diff
Diff has built-in color output, which is reasonable to use. But the following wrappers can be used:
- colordiff — Perl script for diff highlighting.
- cwdiff — (w)diff wrapper with directories support and highlighting.
- git-delta — A syntax-highlighting pager for git and diff output.
cat
- bat — Cat clone with syntax highlighting and git integration.
less
source-highlight
You can enable code syntax coloring in less. First, install source-highlight, then add these lines to your shell configuration file:
~/.bashrc
export LESSOPEN="| /usr/bin/source-highlight-esc.sh %s" export LESS='-R '
lesspipe
Frequent users of the command line interface might want to install lesspipe.
Users may now list the compressed files inside of an archive using their pager:
$ less compressed_file.tar.gz
==> use tar_file:contained_file to view a file in the archive -rw------- username/group 695 2008-01-04 19:24 compressed_file/content1 -rw------- username/group 43 2007-11-07 11:17 compressed_file/content2 compressed_file.tar.gz (END)
lesspipe also grants less the ability of interfacing with files other than archives, serving as an alternative for the specific command associated for that file-type (such as viewing HTML via python-html2text).
Re-login after installing lesspipe in order to activate it, or source /etc/profile.d/lesspipe.sh
.
Make
- colormake — A simple wrapper around make to make its output more readable.
Ping
- prettyping — Add some great features to ping monitoring. A wrapper around the standard ping tool with the objective of making the output prettier, more colorful, more compact, and easier to read.
Shells
bash
See Bash/Prompt customization#Colors.
zsh
See Zsh#Colors.
Fish
See Fish#Web interface.
Terminal emulators
Virtual console
The colors in the Linux virtual console running on the framebuffer can be changed. This is done by writing the escape code \\e]PXRRGGBB
, where X
is the hexadecimal index of the color from 0-F, and RRGGBB
is a traditional hexadecimal RGB code.
For example, to reuse existing colors defined in ~/.Xresources
, add the following to the shell initialization file (such as ~/.bashrc
):
if [ "$TERM" = "linux" ]; then _SEDCMD='s/.*\*color\([0-9]\{1,\}\).*#\([0-9a-fA-F]\{6\}\).*/\1 \2/p' for i in $(sed -n "$_SEDCMD" $HOME/.Xresources | awk '$1 < 16 {printf "\\e]P%X%s", $1, $2}'); do echo -en "$i" done clear fi
Login screen
The below is a colored example of the virtual console login screen in /etc/issue
. Create a backup of the original file with mv /etc/issue /etc/issue.bak
as root, and create a new /etc/issue
:
\e[H\e[2J \e[1;30m| \e[34m\r \s \e[36;1m/\\\\ \e[37m|| \e[36m| = \e[30m| \e[36m/ \\\\ \e[37m|| \e[36m| \e[30m| \e[32m\t \e[1;36m/ \e[0;36m.. \e[1m\\\\ \e[37m//==\\\\\\ ||/= /==\\\\ ||/=\\\\ \e[36m| | |/\\\\ | | \\\\ / \e[30m| \e[32m\d \e[0;36m/ . . \\\\ \e[37m|| || || || || || \e[36m| | | | | | X \e[1;30m| \e[0;36m/ . . \\\\ \e[37m\\\\\\==/| || \\\\==/ || || \e[36m| | | |\ \\/| / \\\\ \e[1;30m| \e[31m\U \e[0;36m/ .. .. \\\\ \e[0;37mA simple, lightweight linux distribution. \e[1;30m| \e[0;36m/_' `_\\\\ \e[1;30m| \e[35m\l \e[0mon \e[1;33m\n \e[0m
See also:
- https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=386429#p386429
- http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/svn/postlfs/logon.html
X window system
Most Xorg terminals, including xterm and urxvt, support at least 16 basic colors. The colors 0-7 are the 'normal' colors. Colors 8-15 are their 'bright' counterparts, used for highlighting. These colors can be modified through X resources, or through specific terminal settings. For example:
~/.Xresources
! Black + DarkGrey *color0: #000000 *color8: #555753 ! DarkRed + Red *color1: #ff6565 *color9: #ff8d8d ! DarkGreen + Green *color2: #93d44f *color10: #c8e7a8 ! DarkYellow + Yellow *color3: #eab93d *color11: #ffc123 ! DarkBlue + Blue *color4: #204a87 *color12: #3465a4 ! DarkMagenta + Magenta *color5: #ce5c00 *color13: #f57900 !DarkCyan + Cyan (both not tango) *color6: #89b6e2 *color14: #46a4ff ! LightGrey + White *color7: #cccccc *color15: #ffffff
foreground
and background
can be read by other applications (such as emacs). This can be avoided by specifiying the class name, for example XTerm.foreground
.See also:
- #Using X resources for how to color bold and underlined text automatically.
- Color Themes - Extensive list of terminal color themes by Phraktured.
- Xcolors by dkeg[dead link 2020-02-28]
Display all 256 colors
Prints all 256 colors across the screen.
$ (x=`tput op` y=`printf %76s`;for i in {0..256};do o=00$i;echo -e ${o:${#o}-3:3} `tput setaf $i;tput setab $i`${y// /=}$x;done)
Display tput escape codes
Replace tput op
with whatever tput you want to trace. op
is the default foreground and background color.
$ ( strace -s5000 -e write tput op 2>&2 2>&1 ) | tee -a /dev/stderr | grep -o '"[^"]*"'
033[\033[1;34m"\33[39;49m"\033[00m
Enumerate supported colors
The following command will let you discover all the terminals you have terminfo support for, and the number of colors each terminal supports. The possible values are: 8, 15, 16, 52, 64, 88 and 256.
$ for T in `find /usr/share/terminfo -type f -printf '%f '`;do echo "$T `tput -T $T colors`";done|sort -nk2
Eterm-88color 88 rxvt-88color 88 xterm+88color 88 xterm-88color 88 Eterm-256color 256 gnome-256color 256 konsole-256color 256 putty-256color 256 rxvt-256color 256 screen-256color 256 screen-256color-bce 256 screen-256color-bce-s 256 screen-256color-s 256 xterm+256color 256 xterm-256color 256
Enumerate terminal capabilities
This command is useful to see what features that are supported by your terminal.
$ infocmp -1 | tr -d '\0\t,' | cut -f1 -d'=' | grep -v "$TERM" | sort | column -c80
acsc ed kcuu1 kich1 rmso am el kDC kLFT rmul bce el1 kdch1 km rs1 bel enacs kel kmous rs2 blink eo kend knp s0ds bold flash kEND kNXT s1ds btns#5 fsl kent kpp s2ds bw home kf1 kPRV s3ds ccc hpa kf10 kRIT sc civis hs kf11 kslt setab clear ht kf12 lines#24 setaf cnorm hts kf13 lm#0 setb colors#0x100 ich kf14 mc0 setf cols#80 ich1 kf15 mc4 sgr cr il kf16 mc5 sgr0 csr il1 kf17 mc5i sitm cub ind kf18 mir smacs cub1 indn kf19 msgr smam cud initc kf2 ncv#0 smcup cud1 is1 kf20 npc smir cuf is2 kf3 op smkx cuf1 it#8 kf4 pairs#0x7fff smso cup ka1 kf5 rc smul cuu ka3 kf6 rev tbc cuu1 kb2 kf7 ri tsl cvvis kbs kf8 rin u6 dch kc1 kf9 ritm u7 dch1 kc3 kfnd rmacs u8 dl kcbt kFND rmam u9 dl1 kcub1 kHOM rmcup vpa dsl kcud1 khome rmir xenl ech kcuf1 kIC rmkx xon
Color scheme scripts
See [2] for scripts which display a chart of your current terminal scheme.
True color support
Some terminals support the full range of 16 million colors (RGB, each with 8 bit resolution): xterm, konsole, st, etc. The corresponding TERM values xterm-direct
, konsole-direct
, st-direct
, etc. are supported starting with ncurses version 6.1 [3]. For more info about terminal emulators and applications that support true color, see [4].
Note that the Linux kernel supports the SGR escape sequences for true-color, but it is pointless to use it, because the driver maps the 24-bit color specifications to a 256-colors color map in the kernel (see the functions rgb_foreground
, rgb_background
). For this reason, there is no terminfo entry linux-direct
.
See also
- lolcat clone in x64 assembly
- Setting colors for less and solving related problems (threads on StackExchange)