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

268

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

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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") – Boris Verkhovskiy Apr 15 '21 at 18:53

score 144 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 23 '16 at 05:09

144

I found this image to be enlightening.

answered Jul 23 '16 at 05:09

Eddie Parker

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

25

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

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answered Jun 25 '11 at 01:22

Bob

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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` – bschlueter Dec 09 '15 at 21:44

score 19 · Answer 4 · edited Apr 15 '21 at 03:39

19

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

Boris Verkhovskiy

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answered Oct 31 '13 at 19:30

Joe Fortier

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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

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Script [show-256-colors.sh](https://gist.github.com/ivanbrennan/8ce10a851851e5f04728d8da900ef1c5) 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

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answered Aug 29 '12 at 19:20

86me

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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

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answered Mar 31 '20 at 13:18

elig

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

How does the tmux color palette work?

7 Answers7

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