OS X Terminal Colors

macos shell terminal colors
sa125 picture sa125 · Oct 11, 2009 · Viewed 428.4k times · Source

I'm new to OS X, having just gotten a Mac after working with Ubuntu Linux for some time. Among the many things I'm trying to figure out is the absence of colors in my terminal window - like the ones that are shown (on Linux) when running ls -la or git status...

I just can't figure out how to activate colors in my shell.

Answer

LuckyMalaka picture LuckyMalaka · Mar 30, 2011

Here is a solution I've found to enable the global terminal colors.

Edit your .bash_profile (since OS X 10.8) — or (for 10.7 and earlier): .profile or .bashrc or /etc/profile (depending on availability) — in your home directory and add following code:

export CLICOLOR=1
export LSCOLORS=GxFxCxDxBxegedabagaced

CLICOLOR=1 simply enables coloring of your terminal.

LSCOLORS=... specifies how to color specific items.

After editing .bash_profile, start a Terminal and force the changes to take place by executing:

source ~/.bash_profile

Then go to Terminal > Preferences, click on the Profiles tab and then the Text subtab and check Display ANSI Colors.

Verified on Sierra (May 2017).

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