Color themes

Default color scheme

As of version v0.3.0, kubecolor bundles new themes (also referred to as “presets”):

Preset	Description
dark (default)	For when your terminal’s background is dark.
light	For when your terminal’s background is light/bright.
pre-0.0.21-dark, pre-0.0.21-light	Original color scheme used before v0.0.21, as well as in the predecessor’s (hidetatz/kubecolor) version.
pre-0.3.0-dark, pre-0.3.0-light	Color scheme used before the introduction of configurable themes in v0.3.0, where we also updated the default theme.
protanopia-dark, protanopia-light	Color theme for Protanopia color blindness.
deuteranopia-dark, deuteranopia-light(*)	Color theme for Deuteranopia color blindness.
tritanopia-dark, tritanopia-light(*)	Color theme for Tritanopia color blindness.

Kubecolor uses the dark theme by default.

dark

light

protanopia-dark

deuteranopia-dark

tritanopia-dark

Note

(*) As of version v0.3.0, both deuteranopia and tritanopia themes are the same as protanopia. They may differ in future versions when we better tune them. Set your configuration to match your color-blindness type so you will benefit of the future changes. We gladly accept suggestions on how to improve them.

Switching to a different color theme

There’s three way to switch to a different color theme:

• Temporarily for a single command using the --kubecolor-theme flag:

  kubecolor get pods --kubecolor-theme=protanopia-dark

• Setting the environment variable KUBECOLOR_PRESET to a specific theme:

  ~/.bashrc

  export KUBECOLOR_PRESET="protanopia-dark"

• Configuring the default theme in the configuration file at ~/.kube/color.yaml:

  ~/.kube/color.yaml

  preset: protanopia-dark

Light Theme

you can switch to the light theme by either:

• setting the variable KUBECOLOR_LIGHT_BACKGROUND=true
• setting the --light-background argument on the command line
• setting the variable KUBECOLOR_PRESET="light"
• configuring the config file ( ~/.kube/color.yaml) with preset: light

Dark

Light

Note

Kubecolor does not do any automatic detection for wether light or dark theme should be used.

It is technically possible for a shell program to detect your terminal’s “dark/light mode preference”.

This is however not yet implemented. See tracking issue: #124

Custom color theme

It is also possible to build your own color theme, either by setting some variables or building up a config file.

For example:

Environment variables

export KUBECOLOR_THEME_DATA_NULL="gray:italic"
export KUBECOLOR_THEME_TABLE_HEADER="fg=white:bold:underline"
export KUBECOLOR_THEME_STDERR_ERROR="fg=yellow:bg=red:bold"

Config file

~/.kube/color.yaml

theme:
  data:
    "null": gray:italic
  table:
    header: fg=white:bold:underline
  stderr:
    error: fg=yellow:bg=red:bold

To list all environment variables and config options, see:

• Reference / Environment variables
• Reference / Config file ~/.kube/color.yaml

Fallback colors

Most of our color options have configured “fallback colors”. These config fields don’t have a default value, but instead rely on another config field as their value.

For example, the environment variable KUBECOLOR_THEME_STATUS_SUCCESS, which is used in pod statuses like Ready and Running; does not have a default color. Instead, it has a fallback to the KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_SUCCESS config field.

Similarly, the KUBECOLOR_THEME_APPLY_CREATED environment variable (used on the “created” keyword in the kubectl apply command’s output) also has a fallback color to the same “base success” color.

This means that if you override KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_SUCCESS then you override both of these use cases at the same time. I.e this:

Environment variables

export KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_SUCCESS="light-blue:italic"

Config file

~/.kube/color.yaml

theme:
  base:
    success: light-blue:italic

Has the same effect as this:

Environment variables

export KUBECOLOR_THEME_STATUS_SUCCESS="light-blue:italic"
export KUBECOLOR_THEME_APPLY_CREATED="light-blue:italic"
# omitting other uses of the "base.success" fallback color for brevity

Config file

~/.kube/color.yaml

theme:
  apply:
    created: light-blue:italic
  status:
    success: light-blue:italic
  # omitting other uses of the "base.success" fallback color for brevity

In effect, this means that you can modify the “base colors” and still adjust most of kubecolor’s output to your color preference, while still allowing you to make finer adjustments where needed.

Additionally, this also acts as forward-compatibility, where kubecolor can add new color config fields and they would still somewhat follow your current theme.

Submitting new themes

We will happily accept any wild, goofy, awesome, super useful, and even weird themes that you want to share with the world!

To submit one, please create a ~/.kube/color.yaml file with the color overrides for your theme and then create a feature request issue over on GitHub.