January 29, 2026
Color Wars, Terminal Edition
How to Choose Colors for Your CLI Applications
Dev picks terminal colors, internet erupts: light vs dark, accessibility, and “keep it simple” vibes
TLDR: The guide shows many terminal color themes break readability, pushing devs to pick safer palettes. Comments explode into a light-vs-dark fight, with accessibility and “keep it simple” minimalism at the center—and a warning: don’t ship tools that ignore user themes or eye comfort.
A tutorial on choosing colors for command-line tools (CLI = programs you use in a text window) accidentally set off a full-on color war. The author tested default Mac themes, Ubuntu’s Tango, and the beloved Solarized—finding some combos unreadable and declaring certain palettes “horrendous.” Cue the crowd: one camp yelled minimalism, insisting tools stick to plain black/white with a dash of red for “bad” and green for “good.” Another camp went accessibility-first, saying it’s easier to read dark text on light backgrounds, especially for folks with astigmatism. And a third group demanded respect for user themes, warning they’ll ditch any app that breaks when switching to light mode.
The top drama: someone tossed a spicy jab at light-theme users, which immediately got dunked on with real vision concerns—turns out dark backgrounds can be torture for some eyes. A pragmatic voice chimed in: if you need lots of color, go TUI (text UI) with your own background and foreground so it stays readable. Meanwhile, a design purist reminded everyone that accommodating whatever wild palette users choose is basic TUI etiquette. Bonus meme: a comment praised the demo’s visuals so much they thought the screenshots were fake—“so smooth” it looked like iTerm. This thread had everything: aesthetics, accessibility, and a dash of roast.
Key Points
- •The article tests color palettes for CLI syntax highlighting across Terminal.app Basic, Tango (Ubuntu), Solarized, and Sorcerer themes.
- •In Sorcerer, all colors are readable except black; white equals the default foreground, brblack is faded, and brwhite allows subtle emphasis.
- •Terminal.app’s Basic themes have significant issues: bryellow is unreadable in light mode and blue/brblue are illegible in dark mode.
- •After excluding problematic colors in Basic themes, the article identifies thirteen colors as safely usable.
- •Tango themes still pose problems: bryellow is unreadable in light; brgreen can be hard to see; grayscale colors remain consistent but can be unreadable depending on background.