1. Manuals
  2. Tumbleweed
  3. util-linux
  4. terminal-colors.d(5)

Scroll to navigation

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 terminal 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 specific 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/terminal-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 escape 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) foreground
34 for blue foreground
35 for purple foreground
36 for cyan foreground
37 for white (or gray) foreground
40 for black background
41 for red background
42 for green background
43 for yellow (or brown) background
44 for blue background
45 for purple background
46 for cyan background
47 for white (or gray) background

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 comment.

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 always 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/>.

2026-05-18 util-linux 2.42.1