I know, this thread is old but the issue not.

Here is a solution I’ve found to enable the global
terminal colors.

Edit your .bash_profile (since OS X 10.8) — or (for 10.7 and earlier): .profile or .bashrc or /etc/profile (depending on availability) — in your home directory and add following code:

export CLICOLOR=1
export LSCOLORS=GxFxCxDxBxegedabagaced

CLICOLOR=1 simply enables coloring of your terminal.

LSCOLORS=... specifies how to color specific items.

zenith

You can use the Linux based syntax in one of your startup scripts. Just tested this on an OS X Mountain Lion box.

eg. in your ~/.bash_profile

export TERM="xterm-color" 
export PS1='[e[0;33m]u[e[0m]@[e[0;32m]h[e[0m]:[e[0;34m]w[e[0m]$ '

This gives you a nice colored prompt. To add the colored ls output, you can add alias ls="ls -G".

To test, just run a source ~/.bash_profile to update your current terminal.

Side note about the colors:
The colors are preceded by an escape sequence e and defined by a color value, composed of [style;color+m] and wrapped in an escaped [] sequence.
eg.

• red = [e[0;31m]
• bold red (style 1) = [e[1;3m]
• clear coloring = [e[0m]

I always add a slightly modified color-scheme in the root’s .bash_profile to make the username red, so I always see clearly if I’m logged in as root (handy to avoid mistakes if I have many terminal windows open).

In /root/.bash_profile:

PS1='[e[0;31m]u[e[0m]@[e[0;32m]h[e[0m]:[e[0;34m]w[e[0m]$ '

For all my SSH accounts online I make sure to put the hostname in red, to distinguish if I’m in a local or remote terminal. Just edit the .bash_profile file in your home dir on the server..

Filype

MartinVonMartinsgrün and 4Levels methods confirmed work great on Mac OS X Mountain Lion.

The file I needed to update was ~/.profile.

However, I couldn’t leave this question without recommending my favorite application, iTerm 2.

iTerm 2 lets you load global color schemes from a file. Really easy to experiment and try a bunch of color schemes.

Here’s a screenshot of the iTerm 2 window and the color preferences.

Once I added the following to my ~/.profile file iTerm 2 was able to override the colors.

export CLICOLOR=1
export LSCOLORS=GxFxCxDxBxegedabagaced
export PS1='[33[01;32m]u@h[33[00m]:[33[01;34m]w[33[00m]$ '

Here is a great repository with some nice presets:

iTerm2 Color Schemes on Github by mbadolato

Bonus: Choose “Show/hide iTerm2 with a system-wide hotkey” and bind the key with BetterTouchTool
for an instant hide/show the terminal with a mouse gesture.

If you want to have your ls colorized you have to edit your ~/.bash_profile file and add the following line (if not already written) :

source .bashrc

Then you edit or create ~/.bashrc file and write an alias to the ls command :

alias ls="ls -G"

Now you have to type source .bashrc in a terminal if already launched, or simply open a new terminal.

If you want more options in your ls juste read the manual ( man ls ). Options are not exactly the same as in a GNU/Linux system.

Check what $TERM gives: mine is xterm-color and ls -alG then does colorised output.

William Rose

If you are using tcsh, then edit your ~/.cshrc file to include the lines:

setenv CLICOLOR 1
setenv LSCOLORS dxfxcxdxbxegedabagacad

Where, like Martin says, LSCOLORS specifies the color scheme you want to use.

To generate the LSCOLORS you want to use, checkout this site

When I worked on Mac OS X in the lab I was able to get the terminal colors from using Terminal (rather than X11) and then editing the profile (from the Mac menu bar). The interface is a bit odd on the colors, but you have to set the modified theme as default.

Further settings worked by editing .bashrc.

CajunLuke