No colors in ls, etc.

[Eugeny]

What is happening?

Color themes can only change colors of colored text that is printed to the terminal, not colorize text that is originally black and white.

How to make sure that a color scheme works

You can print a test table with various colours using msgcat --color=test on UNIX, or the following bash/zsh oneliner if msgcat isn't installed:

for x in {0..8}; do for i in {30..37}; do for a in {40..47}; do echo -ne "\e[$x;$i;$a""m\\\e[$x;$i;$a""m\e[0;37;40m "; done; echo; done; done; echo ""

A similar test script for PowerShell:

$colors = [enum]::GetValues([System.ConsoleColor])
Foreach ($bgcolor in $colors){
    Foreach ($fgcolor in $colors) { Write-Host "$fgcolor|"  -ForegroundColor $fgcolor -BackgroundColor $bgcolor -NoNewLine }
    Write-Host " on $bgcolor"
}

How to enable colorized directory listings

on macOS

By default, ls output on macOS is black and white.

You can re-enable output colorization by adding export CLICOLOR=1 to the end of your ~/.zshrc file (permanently) or by running export CLICOLOR=1 in your shell (temporarily).

on Linux

Alias ls to ls --color=auto, e.g:

alias ls='ls --color=auto'

[kabeza]

Hi
I'm having the same problem in ElementaryOS Hera (Ubuntu 20.04 based)
I set a color scheme in Tabby but it does not take effect. It only changes background/font color

When I run ls --color=auto the colors show correctly as set in color scheme

How could I set that alias permanent to be run at startup and tabby uses it by default in all tabs?

Thanks

[Eugeny]

See the end of the post

[AVGVSTVS96]

I don't see colors anywhere on MacOS Ventura, I do see color in ls when running ls --color but my username is not colored as it should be according the the color schemes I'm using, I have read similar posts but have not actually found an answer as to how to solve this. Can you provide some insight on how to get color working? I'm using the default shell ZSH but also tried Bash and it's not colored either.

I don't see any of the styling provided by the color schemes at all, everything is completely plain text :(

[Eugeny]

Please read the post, a terminal doesn't make text that is white on black (your prompt including the username) colored, it only changes the colors that are already there. Grab a turnkey prompt customizer like https://ohmyz.sh/ to get a nicer prompt.

[Kisaragi-ng]

I stumbled upon this discussion because somehow my terminal color doesn't work even when using ls='ls --color=auto'
turns out i have set my "Minimum contrast ratio" in Settings->Appearance way too high (above 20), got it fixed now.