% exa_colors(5) v0.9.0
exa_colors — customising the file and UI colours of exa
The EXA_COLORS environment variable can be used to customise the colours that exa uses to highlight file names, file metadata, and parts of the UI.
You can use the dircolors program to generate a script that sets the variable from an input file, or if you don’t mind editing long strings of text, you can just type it out directly. These variables have the following structure:
- A list of key-value pairs separated by ‘
=’, such as ‘*.txt=32’. - Multiple ANSI formatting codes are separated by ‘
;’, such as ‘*.txt=32;1;4’. - Finally, multiple pairs are separated by ‘
:’, such as ‘*.txt=32:*.mp3=1;35’.
The key half of the pair can either be a two-letter code or a file glob, and anything that’s not a valid code will be treated as a glob, including keys that happen to be two letters long.
EXA_COLORS="uu=0:gu=0"
: Disable the “current user” highlighting
EXA_COLORS="da=32"
: Turn the date column green
EXA_COLORS="Vagrantfile=1;4;33"
: Highlight Vagrantfiles
EXA_COLORS="*.zip=38;5;125"
: Override the existing zip colour
EXA_COLORS="*.md=38;5;121:*.log=38;5;248"
: Markdown files a shade of green, log files a shade of grey
LS_COLORS can use these ten codes:
di
: directories
ex
: executable files
fi
: regular files
pi
: named pipes
so
: sockets
bd
: block devices
cd
: character devices
ln
: symlinks
or
: symlinks with no target
EXA_COLORS can use many more:
ur
: the user-read permission bit
uw
: the user-write permission bit
ux
: the user-execute permission bit for regular files
ue
: the user-execute for other file kinds
gr
: the group-read permission bit
gw
: the group-write permission bit
gx
: the group-execute permission bit
tr
: the others-read permission bit
tw
: the others-write permission bit
tx
: the others-execute permission bit
su
: setuid, setgid, and sticky permission bits for files
sf
: setuid, setgid, and sticky for other file kinds
xa
: the extended attribute indicator
sn
: the numbers of a file’s size (sets nb, nk, nm, ng and nh)
nb
: the numbers of a file’s size if it is lower than 1 KB/Kib
nk
: the numbers of a file’s size if it is between 1 KB/KiB and 1 MB/MiB
nm
: the numbers of a file’s size if it is between 1 MB/MiB and 1 GB/GiB
ng
: the numbers of a file’s size if it is between 1 GB/GiB and 1 TB/TiB
nt
: the numbers of a file’s size if it is 1 TB/TiB or higher
sb
: the units of a file’s size (sets ub, uk, um, ug and uh)
ub
: the units of a file’s size if it is lower than 1 KB/Kib
uk
: the units of a file’s size if it is between 1 KB/KiB and 1 MB/MiB
um
: the units of a file’s size if it is between 1 MB/MiB and 1 GB/GiB
ug
: the units of a file’s size if it is between 1 GB/GiB and 1 TB/TiB
ut
: the units of a file’s size if it is 1 TB/TiB or higher
df
: a device’s major ID
ds
: a device’s minor ID
uu
: a user that’s you
un
: a user that’s someone else
gu
: a group that you belong to
gn
: a group you aren’t a member of
lc
: a number of hard links
lm
: a number of hard links for a regular file with at least two
ga
: a new flag in Git
gm
: a modified flag in Git
gd
: a deleted flag in Git
gv
: a renamed flag in Git
gt
: a modified metadata flag in Git
xx
: “punctuation”, including many background UI elements
da
: a file’s date
in
: a file’s inode number
bl
: a file’s number of blocks
hd
: the header row of a table
lp
: the path of a symlink
cc
: an escaped character in a filename
bO
: the overlay style for broken symlink paths
Values in EXA_COLORS override those given in LS_COLORS, so you don’t need to re-write an existing LS_COLORS variable with proprietary extensions.
Unlike some versions of ls, the given ANSI values must be valid colour codes: exa won’t just print out whichever characters are given.
The codes accepted by exa are:
1
: for bold
4
: for underline
31
: for red text
32
: for green text
33
: for yellow text
34
: for blue text
35
: for purple text
36
: for cyan text
37
: for white text
38;5;nnn
: for a colour from 0 to 255 (replace the nnn part)
Many terminals will treat bolded text as a different colour, or at least provide the option to.
exa provides its own built-in set of file extension mappings that cover a large range of common file extensions, including documents, archives, media, and temporary files.
Any mappings in the environment variables will override this default set: running exa with LS_COLORS="*.zip=32" will turn zip files green but leave the colours of other compressed files alone.
You can also disable this built-in set entirely by including a reset entry at the beginning of EXA_COLORS.
So setting EXA_COLORS="reset:*.txt=31" will highlight only text files; setting EXA_COLORS="reset" will highlight nothing.
exa is maintained by Benjamin ‘ogham’ Sago and many other contributors.
Website: https://the.exa.website/
Source code: https://github.com/ogham/exa
Contributors: https://github.com/ogham/exa/graphs/contributors
exa(1)