NO_COLOR

Last updated: 2023-02-03

An increasing number of command-line software programs output text with ANSI color escape codes by default. While some developers and users obviously prefer seeing these colors, some users don’t. Unfortunately, every new piece of software seems to have a different way of disabling colored text output and some software has no way at all.

Accepting the futility of trying to reverse this trend, an informal standard is hereby proposed:

Command-line software which adds ANSI color to its output by default should check for a NO_COLOR environment variable that, when present and not an empty string (regardless of its value), prevents the addition of ANSI color.

By adopting this standard, users that prefer to have plain, non-colored text output can set one environment variable in their shell to have it automatically affect all supported software.

To add to this list of supported software, clone this site’s Git repository and submit a pull request.

Example Implementation

#include <stdbool.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
	char *no_color = getenv("NO_COLOR");
	bool color = true;

	if (no_color != NULL && no_color[0] != '\0') {
		color = false;
	}

	/* do getopt(3) and/or config-file parsing to possibly turn color back on */
	...
}

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Why not just set $TERM to dumb or xterm without color support? Or change all color definitions in the terminal to print the same color?

   The terminal is capable of color and should be able to print color when instructed. NO_COLOR is a hint to the software running in the terminal to suppress addition of color, not to the terminal to prevent any color from being shown.

   It is reasonable to configure certain software such as a text editor to use color or other ANSI attributes sparingly (such as the reverse attribute for a status bar) while still desiring that other software not add color unless configured to. It should be up to the user whether color is used, not the software author.

2. How should configuration files and command-line arguments be processed in the presence of $NO_COLOR?

   User-level configuration files and per-instance command-line arguments should override $NO_COLOR. A user should be able to export $NO_COLOR in their shell configuration file as a default, but configure a specific program in its configuration file to specifically enable color.

   This also means that software that can add color but doesn’t by default does not need to care about $NO_COLOR, because it will only ever be adding color when instructed to do so (as it should be).

Color libraries supporting NO_COLOR to disable default color output

Software using these libraries to output color inherently support disabling color via NO_COLOR.

Software directly supporting NO_COLOR to disable default color output

Disabling color in software not supporting NO_COLOR