Is it possible to change the color scheme of the Windows terminal?

Question

Many programs like to output certain things in blue. That's almost unreadable on a common black background. Turning off color output for the program in question is one alternative, but in X (xterm), the problem can be solved through X resources by adjusting the value of "blue color" to a slightly brighter blue. Is there a similar way to do this in Windows?

Solution 1

You may try:

• Press Alt-Space (to show its menu) then select Properties.
• Click the Colors tab.
• Click each color (in the palette) you want to change, then change its Red-Green-Blue values in the Selected Color Value section.
• Click the color you want to use as Screen Background.
• Click OK.

Note that this affects only current "root" program. For example, you may run Far Manager 2 using either its shortcut in Start menu, or run in cmd.exe directly (by entering "C:\Program Files\Far2\Far.exe" in prompt). Changes you made when running it via its shortcut have no effects when running it in cmd.exe, and vice versa.

So to not have to change colors in every shortcut, I just change colors for cmd.exe, and run any console programs from it.

Solution 2

C:\Documents and Settings\32CpuBadBoy\Desktop>color /?
Sets the default console foreground and background colors.

COLOR [attr]

  attr        Specifies color attribute of console output

Color attributes are specified by TWO hex digits -- the first corresponds to the background; the second the foreground. Each digit can be any of the following values:

0 = Black       8 = Gray
1 = Blue        9 = Light Blue
2 = Green       A = Light Green
3 = Aqua        B = Light Aqua
4 = Red         C = Light Red
5 = Purple      D = Light Purple
6 = Yellow      E = Light Yellow
7 = White       F = Bright White

If no argument is given, this command restores the color to what it was when CMD.EXE started. This value either comes from the current console window, the /T command line switch or from the DefaultColor registry value.

The COLOR command sets ERRORLEVEL to 1 if an attempt is made to execute the COLOR command with a foreground and background color that are the same.

Example: COLOR fc produces light red on bright white.

Solution 3

I believe that this is the link you are looking for.

The following is a quote from the link.

1. Click Start and right click Command Prompt.
2. Select Properties, from the drop down context menu.
3. Select the Colors tab, from the resulting window.
4. Change the text color and background color by checking their respective boxes and then changing the color values, or selecting the preset colors below.
5. Select Apply after choosing the new color scheme, then click OK. NOTE: To return to default color scheme, type the following command: color 08.

Solution 4

I'm on Windows 10. The default colors are way too dark and I want them stronger. This is what the default colors reg definitions look like:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Console]
"ColorTable00"=dword:00000000
"ColorTable01"=dword:00800000
"ColorTable02"=dword:00008000
"ColorTable03"=dword:00808000
"ColorTable04"=dword:00000080
"ColorTable05"=dword:00800080
"ColorTable06"=dword:00008080
"ColorTable07"=dword:00c0c0c0
"ColorTable08"=dword:00808080
"ColorTable09"=dword:00ff0000
"ColorTable10"=dword:0000ff00
"ColorTable11"=dword:00ffff00
"ColorTable12"=dword:000000ff
"ColorTable13"=dword:00ff00ff
"ColorTable14"=dword:0000ffff
"ColorTable15"=dword:00ffffff
"ScreenColors"=dword:00000007
"PopupColors"=dword:000000f5

To get strong colors just change all the 80 hex pairs to ff like this:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Console]
"ColorTable00"=dword:00000000
"ColorTable01"=dword:00ff0000
"ColorTable02"=dword:0000ff00
"ColorTable03"=dword:00ffff00
"ColorTable04"=dword:000000ff
"ColorTable05"=dword:00ff00ff
"ColorTable06"=dword:0000ffff
"ColorTable07"=dword:00c0c0c0
"ColorTable08"=dword:00808080
"ColorTable09"=dword:00ff0000
"ColorTable10"=dword:0000ff00
"ColorTable11"=dword:00ffff00
"ColorTable12"=dword:000000ff
"ColorTable13"=dword:00ff00ff
"ColorTable14"=dword:0000ffff
"ColorTable15"=dword:00ffffff
"ScreenColors"=dword:00000007
"PopupColors"=dword:000000f5

Except the gray 808080. We still want gray not white ffffff. Save this in a file ending in .reg and double click it to get strong colors. You also have to run cmd via win+r for it to work.

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Comments

[random-userr]

Thanks! But it wasn't really what I was asking, my specific question is how do I change the shade of the color blue, not set output to blue.

[Shanteva]

Thank you!! Does anyone know WHY the default colors on Windows are so illegible. On a black background, "light blue" is too dark, and on a white back ground yellow is too light. It seems like a lose lose situation. Is it just because colors were hardly used before all the GNU stuff became more common?

[InterLinked]

I believe typing color will fix that. i.e. 'color 27' is white text on green background