Usage

First, make sure to install kubecolor: Setup / Installation.

Kubecolor understands every subcommands and options which are available for kubectl. What you have to do is just use kubecolor instead of kubectl like:

# instead of this:
kubectl get pods

# use this:
kubecolor get pods

If you want to make the colorized kubectl default on your shell, then override kubectl to become an alias instead:

alias kubectl="kubecolor"

Sample:

Forcing colors

Kubecolor will automatically disable its colorization if it detects that its output (stdout) is not a terminal or is a terminal that does not support colors. To override this behavior, you can for example use the --force-colors flag:

kubecolor get pods | cat -A
#NAME          READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
#nginx-dnmv5   1/1     Running   0          6d6h
#nginx-m8pbc   1/1     Running   0          6d6h
#nginx-qdf9b   1/1     Running   0          6d6h

kubecolor get pods --force-colors | cat -A
#^[[1mNAME          READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE^[[0m$
#^[[37mnginx-dnmv5^[[0m   ^[[36m1/1^[[0m     ^[[32mRunning^[[0m   ^[[36m0^[[0m          ^[[37m6d6h^[[0m$
#^[[37mnginx-m8pbc^[[0m   ^[[36m1/1^[[0m     ^[[32mRunning^[[0m   ^[[36m0^[[0m          ^[[37m6d6h^[[0m$
#^[[37mnginx-qdf9b^[[0m   ^[[36m1/1^[[0m     ^[[32mRunning^[[0m   ^[[36m0^[[0m          ^[[37m6d6h^[[0m$

The inverse can also be done by telling kubecolor to not use colors via the --plain flag.

Read more about configuration options at our reference docs:

Reference / Command-line flags

Themes

Theming was introduced in v0.3.0, and has a lot of configs available to provide fine-grained control over the colorization of the output.

In short, you can for example supply the --light-background flag to instead use colors that are better suited for terminals with light background:

Alternatively, we also have some colorblind-friendly themes available: