Mercurial colorizes output from several commands.

For example, the diff command shows additions in green and deletions

in red, while the status command shows modified files in magenta. Many

other commands have analogous colors. It is possible to customize

these colors.

To enable color (default) whenever possible use::

  [ui]

  color = yes

To disable color use::

  [ui]

  color = no

See :hg:`help config.ui.color` for details.

.. container:: windows

  The default pager on Windows does not support color, so enabling the pager

  will effectively disable color.  See :hg:`help config.ui.paginate` to disable

  the pager.  Alternately, MSYS and Cygwin shells provide `less` as a pager,

  which can be configured to support ANSI color mode.  Windows 10 natively

  supports ANSI color mode.

Mode

====

Mercurial can use various systems to display color. The supported modes are

``ansi``, ``win32``, and ``terminfo``.  See :hg:`help config.color` for details

about how to control the mode.

Effects

=======

Other effects in addition to color, like bold and underlined text, are

also available. By default, the terminfo database is used to find the

terminal codes used to change color and effect.  If terminfo is not

available, then effects are rendered with the ECMA-48 SGR control

function (aka ANSI escape codes).

The available effects in terminfo mode are 'blink', 'bold', 'dim',

'inverse', 'invisible', 'italic', 'standout', and 'underline'; in

ECMA-48 mode, the options are 'bold', 'inverse', 'italic', and

'underline'.  How each is rendered depends on the terminal emulator.

Some may not be available for a given terminal type, and will be

silently ignored.

If the terminfo entry for your terminal is missing codes for an effect

or has the wrong codes, you can add or override those codes in your

configuration::

  [color]

  terminfo.dim = \E[2m

where '\E' is substituted with an escape character.

Labels

======

Text receives color effects depending on the labels that it has. Many

default Mercurial commands emit labelled text. You can also define

your own labels in templates using the label function, see :hg:`help

templates`. A single portion of text may have more than one label. In

that case, effects given to the last label will override any other

effects. This includes the special "none" effect, which nullifies

other effects.

Labels are normally invisible. In order to see these labels and their

position in the text, use the global --color=debug option. The same

anchor text may be associated to multiple labels, e.g.

  [log.changeset changeset.secret|changeset:   22611:6f0a53c8f587]

The following are the default effects for some default labels. Default

effects may be overridden from your configuration file::

  [color]

  status.modified = blue bold underline red_background

  status.added = green bold

  status.removed = red bold blue_background

  status.deleted = cyan bold underline

  status.unknown = magenta bold underline

  status.ignored = black bold

  # 'none' turns off all effects

  status.clean = none

  status.copied = none

  qseries.applied = blue bold underline

  qseries.unapplied = black bold

  qseries.missing = red bold

  diff.diffline = bold

  diff.extended = cyan bold

  diff.file_a = red bold

  diff.file_b = green bold

  diff.hunk = magenta

  diff.deleted = red

  diff.inserted = green

  diff.changed = white

  diff.tab =

  diff.trailingwhitespace = bold red_background

  # Blank so it inherits the style of the surrounding label

  changeset.public =

  changeset.draft =

  changeset.secret =

  resolve.unresolved = red bold

  resolve.resolved = green bold

  bookmarks.active = green

  branches.active = none

  branches.closed = black bold

  branches.current = green

  branches.inactive = none

  tags.normal = green

  tags.local = black bold

  rebase.rebased = blue

  rebase.remaining = red bold

  shelve.age = cyan

  shelve.newest = green bold

  shelve.name = blue bold

  histedit.remaining = red bold

Custom colors

=============

Because there are only eight standard colors, Mercurial allows you

to define color names for other color slots which might be available

for your terminal type, assuming terminfo mode.  For instance::

  color.brightblue = 12

  color.pink = 207

  color.orange = 202

to set 'brightblue' to color slot 12 (useful for 16 color terminals

that have brighter colors defined in the upper eight) and, 'pink' and

'orange' to colors in 256-color xterm's default color cube.  These

defined colors may then be used as any of the pre-defined eight,

including appending '_background' to set the background to that color.