How does the tmux color palette work?

Question

I'm trying to set something to gray, but can't figure out how. The only bit of info in the man page about colors I can find is:

message-bg colour
  Set status line message background colour, where colour is one of:
  black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, white, colour0 to
  colour255 from the 256-colour palette, or default.

I also found a blog post which iterates through colors, but I can't quite grok it, and don't want to sit at the terminal all day guessing color numbers until one works.

cYrus · Accepted Answer · 2016-10-07T17:42:53.083

269

You can get a list with this bash snippet:

for i in {0..255}; do
    printf "\x1b[38;5;${i}mcolour${i}\x1b[0m\n"
done

Then use colourxxx with tmux.

edited Oct 07 '16 at 17:42

answered May 18 '11 at 18:26

cYrus

21,787

perhaps you need three digit colours? This script outputs like color12 but that is not accepted by tmux as a valid colour. – artfulrobot Jan 11 '13 at 11:49
8

My tmux (1.6) accepts even colors like colour12 (mind the "u"). – cYrus Jan 11 '13 at 12:28
1

@cYrus starting with 3.2, tmux also supports color12 (without the "u") – Apr 15 '21 at 18:53

score 152 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 23 '16 at 05:09

152

I found this image to be enlightening.

answered Jul 23 '16 at 05:09

Eddie Parker

2,914

41

You can create it with for i in {0..255}; do printf "\x1b[38;5;${i}mcolor%-5i\x1b[0m" $i ; if ! (( ($i + 1 ) % 8 )); then echo ; fi ; done – 12431234123412341234123 Oct 04 '17 at 11:10
2

An alternative output that groups the colors after colour15 is generated with for i in {0..255}; do printf "\x1b[38;5;${i}mcolor%-5i\x1b[0m" $i ; if ! (( ($i - 3) % 6 )); then echo ; fi ; done. – G-Wiz Feb 08 '23 at 22:48

score 26 · Answer 3 · edited Mar 06 '14 at 19:34

26

In Subversion (what will be tmux 1.5) you can also use #abcdef hex-style colours which are mapped to the nearest 256 colour palette entry. You need quotes as it's treated as a string, whereas regular color names are treated as named constants. Also note that 3-letter shorthand (#f00) is invalid.

Example:

set pane-active-border-bg red # no quotes for name
set pane-active-border-bg "#ff0000" # quotes for rgb

edited Mar 06 '14 at 19:34

mahemoff

1,063

answered Jun 25 '11 at 01:22

Bob

1,466

1

Can you? I can't see how to... – Eric Apr 23 '12 at 18:18
6

set-option message-bg "#abcdef"; the quotes are necessary. – chepner May 01 '12 at 20:05
You also seem to have to use the full 6 hex chars, no 3 char shortcuts i.e. #fff will not work, you have to use #ffffff – Schlueter Dec 09 '15 at 21:44

score 20 · Answer 4 · edited Apr 15 '21 at 03:39

20

Before tmux 3.2 (released in April 2021), tmux only supported the international (British) spelling for the 256 colour palette, e.g.

"colour121"

as opposed to the American spelling that drops the u

"color121"

If you're using tmux 3.2 or later, you can spell it either way.

edited Apr 15 '21 at 03:39

answered Oct 31 '13 at 19:30

Joe Fortier

301

airstrike · Answer 5 · 2019-12-17T17:27:40.017

8

Building up on @cYrus' answer, I wrote a script to break the output of the colors into N number of columns, where N is the first argument

# colors.sh

#!/bin/bash
if [ -z $1 ]; then
    BREAK=4
else
    BREAK=$1
fi
for i in {0..255} ; do
    printf "\x1b[38;5;${i}mcolour${i} \t"
    if [ $(( i % $BREAK )) -eq $(($BREAK-1)) ] ; then
        printf "\n"
    fi
done

Try it by saving it into a file called colors.sh, then ./colors.sh 4

Don't forget to chmod +x colors.sh first.

edited Dec 17 '19 at 17:27

answered Feb 09 '16 at 22:43

airstrike

722

4

Script show-256-colors.sh can be useful to show background colors as well. – Maxim Suslov Aug 02 '18 at 01:47
1

You ought to default it to say, at least 4 columns, to distinguish it from the origin script. – dbkeys Aug 26 '19 at 13:28

score 7 · Answer 6 · edited Oct 01 '12 at 09:43

7

I've been using the xterm-color-table.vim script. Any 256 color terminal color table will work.

edited Oct 01 '12 at 09:43

zero2cx

641

answered Aug 29 '12 at 19:20

86me

71

score 0 · Answer 7 · edited Aug 11 '20 at 10:07

0

I find this function producing the most concise and clear output (it's not mine):

colors () {
    for i in {0..255}
    do
        print -Pn "%K{$i}  %k%F{$i}${(l:3::0:)i}%f " ${${(M)$((i%6)):#3}:+$'\n'}
    done
}

Then you use colourXXX where XXX is the three digits code printed above as the value for fg=, bg= etc...

edited Aug 11 '20 at 10:07

DJCrashdummy

163
1
1
11

answered Mar 31 '20 at 13:18

elig

168

1

Suggestion: note this script requires zsh. – kkahl Dec 28 '21 at 00:38

How does the tmux color palette work?

7 Answers7

Linked