TERMINAL-COLORS.D(5) File formats TERMINAL-COLORS.D(5) NAME terminal-colors.d - configure output colorization for various utilities SYNOPSIS /etc/terminal-colors.d/[name.|[name]@term.]type DESCRIPTION Files in this directory determine the default behavior for utilities when coloring output. The name is a utility name. The name is optional and when none is specified then the file is used for all unspecified utilities. The term is a terminal identifier (the TERM environment variable). The ter- minal identifier is optional and when none is specified then the file is used for all unspecified terminals. The type is a file type. Supported file types are: disable Turns off output colorization for all compatible utilities. See also the NO_COLOR environment variable below. enable Turns on output colorization; any matching disable files are ignored. scheme Specifies colors used for output. The file format may be spe- cific to the utility, the default format is described below. If there are more files that match for a utility, then the file with the more specific filename wins. For example, the filename @xterm.scheme has less priority than dmesg@xterm.scheme. The lowest priority are those files without a utility name and terminal identifier (e.g., "disable"). The user-specific $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/terminal-colors.d or $HOME/.config/ter- minal-colors.d overrides the global setting. DEFAULT SCHEME FILES FORMAT The following statement is recognized: name color-sequence The name is a logical name for the color sequence (for example: error). The names are specific to the utilities. For more details always see the COLORS section in the man page for the utility. The color-sequence can be a color name, an ANSI color sequence, or an es- cape sequence. Color names Valid color names are: black, blink, blue, bold, brown, cyan, darkgray, gray, green, halfbright, lightblue, lightcyan, lightgray, lightgreen, lightmagenta, lightred, magenta, red, reset, reverse, and yellow. ANSI color sequences An ANSI color sequence is composed of sequences of numbers separated by semicolons. The most common codes are: +----+-----------------------------+ | | | | 0 | to restore default color | +----+-----------------------------+ | | | | 1 | for brighter colors | +----+-----------------------------+ | | | | 4 | for underlined text | +----+-----------------------------+ | | | | 5 | for flashing text | +----+-----------------------------+ | | | | 30 | for black foreground | +----+-----------------------------+ | | | | 31 | for red foreground | +----+-----------------------------+ | | | | 32 | for green foreground | +----+-----------------------------+ | | | | 33 | for yellow (or brown) fore- | | | ground | +----+-----------------------------+ | | | | 34 | for blue foreground | +----+-----------------------------+ | | | | 35 | for purple foreground | +----+-----------------------------+ | | | | 36 | for cyan foreground | +----+-----------------------------+ | | | | 37 | for white (or gray) fore- | | | ground | +----+-----------------------------+ | | | | 40 | for black background | +----+-----------------------------+ | | | | 41 | for red background | +----+-----------------------------+ | | | | 42 | for green background | +----+-----------------------------+ | | | | 43 | for yellow (or brown) back- | | | ground | +----+-----------------------------+ | | | | 44 | for blue background | +----+-----------------------------+ | | | | 45 | for purple background | +----+-----------------------------+ | | | | 46 | for cyan background | +----+-----------------------------+ | | | | 47 | for white (or gray) back- | | | ground | +----+-----------------------------+ For example, to use a red background for alert messages in the output of dmesg(1), use: echo 'alert 37;41' >> /etc/terminal-colors.d/dmesg.scheme Escape sequences An escape sequence is needed to enter a space, backslash, caret, or any control character anywhere in a string, as well as a hash mark as the first character. These C-style backslash-escapes can be used: +-----+----------------------------+ | | | | \a | Bell (ASCII 7) | +-----+----------------------------+ | | | | \b | Backspace (ASCII 8) | +-----+----------------------------+ | | | | \e | Escape (ASCII 27) | +-----+----------------------------+ | | | | \f | Form feed (ASCII 12) | +-----+----------------------------+ | | | | \n | Newline (ASCII 10) | +-----+----------------------------+ | | | | \r | Carriage Return (ASCII 13) | +-----+----------------------------+ | | | | \t | Tab (ASCII 9) | +-----+----------------------------+ | | | | \v | Vertical Tab (ASCII 11) | +-----+----------------------------+ | | | | \? | Delete (ASCII 127) | +-----+----------------------------+ | | | | \_ | Space | +-----+----------------------------+ | | | | \\ | Backslash (\) | +-----+----------------------------+ | | | | \^ | Caret (^) | +-----+----------------------------+ | | | | \\# | Hash mark (#) | +-----+----------------------------+ Comments Lines where the first non-blank character is a # (hash) are ignored. Any other use of the hash character is not interpreted as introducing a com- ment. ENVIRONMENT TERMINAL_COLORS_DEBUG=all enables debug output. NO_COLOR if defined, this disables output colorization unless explicitly enabled by a command-line option. See https://no-color.org/ for more details. Supported since util-linux version 2.41. FILES $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/terminal-colors.d $HOME/.config/terminal-colors.d /etc/terminal-colors.d EXAMPLES Disable colors for all compatible utilities: touch /etc/terminal-colors.d/disable Disable colors for all compatible utils on a vt100 terminal: touch /etc/terminal-colors.d/@vt100.disable Disable colors for all compatible utils except dmesg(1): touch /etc/terminal-colors.d/disable touch /etc/terminal-colors.d/dmesg.enable COMPATIBILITY The terminal-colors.d functionality is currently supported by all util-linux utilities which provide colorized output. For more details al- ways see the COLORS section in the man page for the utility. REPORTING BUGS For bug reports, use the issue tracker <https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues>. AVAILABILITY terminal-colors.d is part of the util-linux package which can be downloaded from Linux Kernel Archive <https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/>. util-linux 2.42.2 2026-06-16 TERMINAL-COLORS.D(5)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | DEFAULT SCHEME FILES FORMAT | ENVIRONMENT | FILES | EXAMPLES | COMPATIBILITY | REPORTING BUGS | AVAILABILITY
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