CygWin terminal colors
November 14th, 2010
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Many of the default ANSI colors used by the CygWin terminal are almost unreadable. For example, the blue that is used for directories in a file listing is pretty dark and hard to read on a black background. This limits the color palette that can be used in things such as the PS1 shell prompt. Try the following script (colortable16.sh) to see what your colors currently look like.
The colors can be changed by clicking on the system menu in the upper-left corner and selecting “Properties”. I decided to use the same colors as the Gnome terminal.
This is how the colors are defined in CygWin by default:
| Color | R | G | B |
|---|---|---|---|
| Black | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Blue | 0 | 0 | 128 |
| Green | 0 | 128 | 0 |
| Cyan | 0 | 128 | 128 |
| Red | 128 | 0 | 0 |
| Pruple | 128 | 0 | 128 |
| Brown | 128 | 128 | 0 |
| Light Gray | 192 | 192 | 192 |
| Dark Gray | 128 | 128 | 128 |
| Light Blue | 0 | 0 | 255 |
| Light Green | 0 | 255 | 0 |
| Light Cyan | 0 | 255 | 255 |
| Light Red | 255 | 0 | 0 |
| Light Purple | 255 | 0 | 255 |
| Light Yellow | 255 | 255 | 0 |
| White | 255 | 255 | 255 |
This is how they should be changed so that they’re more usable:
| Color | R | G | B |
|---|---|---|---|
| Black | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Blue | 0 | 0 | 170 |
| Green | 0 | 170 | 0 |
| Cyan | 0 | 170 | 170 |
| Red | 170 | 0 | 0 |
| Pruple | 170 | 0 | 170 |
| Brown | 170 | 85 | 0 |
| Light Gray | 170 | 170 | 170 |
| Dark Gray | 85 | 85 | 85 |
| Light Blue | 85 | 85 | 255 |
| Light Green | 85 | 255 | 85 |
| Light Cyan | 85 | 255 | 255 |
| Light Red | 255 | 85 | 85 |
| Light Purple | 255 | 85 | 255 |
| Light Yellow | 255 | 255 | 85 |
| White | 255 | 255 | 255 |