Add colors to your bash shell

Unix shell is one of the most powerful tools ever created, but sometimes it can be quite dull. Adding it a bit more spice could make your day brighter and your thoughts clearer.

This can be done by setting the LS_COLORS environment variable. Best way to do it is in ~/.bash_profile file. If done like this, color settings will be loaded each time you start your terminal.

There are a lot of predefined configurations that you can use to set color scheme for your shell. One of most extensive ones is hosted on github: https://github.com/trapd00r/LS_COLORS

In addition to instructions that readme file on this repository provides, you should also:

  • use ~/.bash_profile instead of ~/.bashrs if it doesn’t work on your machine
  • add another line in ~/.bash_profile
    alias ls='ls --color=auto'

Once you set it up, your terminal will look like this.

Happy typing!

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