Not Always Black & White

The terminal emulator that ships with macOS is, by default, a black (background) and white (text) affair. In addition to a bland aesthetic, this lack of color has practical implications for the user. For example, the output of the ls command is muted, while files opened in vim lack syntax highlighting.

For those that want to add a little color to their terminal, brightening things up is only a few keystrokes away. First, if it does not already exist, create a .bash_profile in your home directory with: touch ~/.bash_profile, then edit this file with: vim ~/.bash_profile to include the following:

export CLICOLOR=1
export LSCOLORS=GxFxCxDxBxegedabagaced

Next, open up a terminal and push these changes with: source ~/.bash_profile. Lastly, check "Display ANSI colors" in Terminal -> Preferences -> Profiles -> Text (if needed).

Similarly, adding color to the vim palette involves creating a .vimrc file in your home directory with: touch ~/.vimrc, and then editing the file with vim ~/.vimrc to include:

syntax on

These (colorful) changes take effect once you save your edits.

Cheers.