kubecolor

KubeColor is a kubectl replacement used to add colors to your kubectl output.

You can also change color theme for light-background environment (click to expand)

[New!] We also have colorblind-adjusted color themes (click to expand)

Note: As of version v0.3.0, both deuteranopia and tritanopia themes are the same as protanopia. They may differ in future versions when we better tune them. Set your configuration to match your color-blindness type so you will benefit of the future changes. We gladly accept suggestions on how to improve them.

What's this?

kubecolor colorizes your kubectl command output and does nothing else. kubecolor internally calls kubectl command and try to colorizes the output so you can use kubecolor as a complete alternative of kubectl. It means you can write this in your .bash_profile:

alias kubectl="kubecolor"

# Also works for OpenShift CLI
export KUBECTL_COMMAND="oc"
alias oc="kubecolor"

If you use your .bash_profile on more than one computer (e.g. synced via git) that might not all have kubecolor installed, you can avoid breaking kubectl like so:

command -v kubecolor >/dev/null 2>&1 && alias kubectl="kubecolor"

For now, not all subcommands are supported and some of them might be in the future. If you want something to be supported by kubecolor, you can open an issue in this GitHub repo. Even if what you want to do is not supported by kubecolor right now, kubecolor still can just show kubectl output without any decorations, so you don't need to switch kubecolor and kubectl but you always can use kubecolor.

Additionally, if kubectl resulted an error, kubecolor just shows the error message in red or yellow.

Please keep in mind that kubecolor has runtime overhead compared to kubectl because it runs kubectl internally and parses the output, then colorizes it.

Installation

Docker

Running it via Docker can be nice for just trying out kubecolor:

docker run --rm -it -v $HOME/.kube:/home/nonroot/.kube:ro ghcr.io/kubecolor/kubecolor get pods

If you're getting the following error permission denied (click to expand)

In case you are getting the following error (common in environments like WSL):

error: error loading config file "/home/nonroot/.kube/config": open /home/nonroot/.kube/config: permission denied

then try changing the permission of your ~/.kube/config file:

chmod 644 ~/.kube/config

Homebrew

brew install kubecolor

If you previously installed kubecolor using the old tap, remove it first (click to expand)

If kubecolor was installed using brew install kubecolor/tap/kubecolor, do the following:

brew uninstall kubecolor
brew untap kubecolor/tap
brew update
brew install kubecolor

Scoop

scoop install kubecolor

Nix

nix-shell -p kubecolor

AUR (Arch User Repositories)

yay -Syu kubecolor

Termux (Android)

pkg install kubecolor

Download binary via GitHub release

Go to Release page then download the binary which fits your environment.

Compile from source

Requires Go 1.21 (or later)

go install github.com/kubecolor/kubecolor@latest

Usage

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

kubecolor --context=your_context get pods -o json

If you want to make the colorized kubectl default on your shell, just add this line into your shell configuration file:

alias kubectl="kubecolor"

Dynamic tty support

When the kubecolor output tty is not standard output, it automatically disables the colorization. For example, if you are running kubecolor get pods > result.txt or kubecolor get pods | grep xxx, the output will be passed through to file or another command, so colorization is not applied. You can force kubecolor do colorization at such cases by passing --force-colors flag. See the upcoming section for more details.

Flags

Available flags for kubecolor. When you pass them, kubecolor will understand them but these flags won't be passed to kubectl.

• --kubecolor-version

Prints the version of kubecolor (not kubectl one).

• --light-background

When your terminal's background color is something light (e.g white), default color preset might look too bright and not readable. If so, specify --light-background as a command line argument. kubecolor will use a color preset for light-background environment.

• --force-colors

By default, kubecolor never output the result in colors when the tty is not a terminal standard output. If you want to force kubecolor to show the result in colors for non-terminal tty, you can specify this flag. For example, when you want to pass kubecolor result to grep (kubecolor get pods | grep pod_name), this option is useful.

• --plain

When you don't want to colorize output, you can specify --plain. Kubecolor understands this option and outputs the result without colorizing.

ENV Variables

• KUBECOLOR_OBJ_FRESH

When setting the variable KUBECOLOR_OBJ_FRESH to a duration, you can change the color of the object depending on its creation time.

Please see Specify object fresh age threshold

• KUBECOLOR_FORCE_COLORS

In addition to forcing colors with --force-colors, you can also do so by setting the environment variable KUBECOLOR_FORCE_COLORS=true. You can use this environment variable to colorize output when you invoke kubecolor in the watch command (e.g. watch kubecolor get pods). Set the following alias:

alias watch='KUBECOLOR_FORCE_COLORS=true watch --color '

Be sure to include the space at the end to enable alias expansion (without this additional space, the command watch kgp would fail, for example).

• KUBECOLOR_LIGHT_BACKGROUND

In addition to use the light color preset with --light-background, you can also do so by setting the environment variable KUBECOLOR_LIGHT_BACKGROUND=true.

Autocompletion

kubectl provides autocompletion feature. If you are already using it, you might have to configure it for kubecolor. Please also refer to kubectl official doc for kubectl autocomplete.

Bash

For Bash, configuring autocompletion requires adding following line in your shell config file (e.g ~/.bashrc).

# autocomplete for kubecolor
complete -o default -F __start_kubectl kubecolor

If you are using an alias like k="kubecolor", then just change above like:

complete -o default -F __start_kubectl k

Zsh

For zsh make sure these lines are present in your zsh config file (e.g ~/.zshrc):

# get zsh complete kubectl
source <(kubectl completion zsh)
alias kubectl=kubecolor
# make completion work with kubecolor
compdef kubecolor=kubectl

fish

Fish completion is officially supported by kubectl. To begin with, if you don't already have kubectl completion working, make sure the following line is in your ~/.config/fish/config.fish file:

kubectl completion fish | source

To enable completions for kubecolor, add the following function to your ~/.config/fish/config.fish file:

# reuse "kubectl" completions on "kubecolor"
function kubecolor --wraps kubectl
  command kubecolor $argv
end

# adds alias for "kubectl" to "kubecolor" with completions
function kubectl --wraps kubectl
  command kubecolor $argv
end

# adds alias for "k" to "kubecolor" with completions
function k --wraps kubectl
  command kubecolor $argv
end

PowerShell

For PowerShell (pwsh) add the following lines to your profile ($PROFILE, e.g C:\Users\yourusername\Documents\PowerShell\Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1):

# Completion for kubectl
if (Get-Command kubectl -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) {
  # This also registers the $__kubectlCompleterBlock variable
  kubectl completion powershell | Out-String | Invoke-Expression
}

# Set aliases
Set-Alias -Name k -Value kubectl
Set-Alias -Name kubectl -Value kubecolor

# Reuse the kubectl completion on kubecolor and the aliases
Register-ArgumentCompleter -CommandName 'k','kubectl','kubecolor' -ScriptBlock $__kubectlCompleterBlock

Specify what command to execute as kubectl

Sometimes, you may want to specify which command to use as kubectl internally in kubecolor. For example, when you want to use a versioned-kubectl kubectl.1.19, you can do that by an environment variable:

KUBECTL_COMMAND="kubectl.1.19" kubecolor get po

When you don't set KUBECTL_COMMAND, then kubectl is used by default.

Specify object fresh age threshold

When you want to figure out which object are recently created the fresh ones are colored green. It only works with get subcommand. You can customize threshold level by using environment variable KUBECOLOR_OBJ_FRESH with value format time.Duration.

KUBECOLOR_OBJ_FRESH="1m" kubecolor get po

Default value is 0s, it means is disabled.

Color theme

Note

Feature available since kubecolor v0.3.0

With a lot of config options, kubecolor allows you to precisely tailor the colors of your output.

Environment variable	Type	Description	Dark theme
KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_INFO	color	general color for when things are informational	white
KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_PRIMARY	color	general color for when things are focus	magenta
KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_SECONDARY	color	general color for when things are secondary focus	cyan
KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_SUCCESS	color	general color for when things are good	green
KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_WARNING	color	general color for when things are wrong	yellow
KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_DANGER	color	general color for when things are bad	red
KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_MUTED	color	general color for when things are less relevant	gray:italic
KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_KEY	color[]	general color for keys (fallback to [KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_SECONDARY])	hicyan / cyan
KUBECOLOR_THEME_DEFAULT	color	default when no specific mapping is found for the command	green
KUBECOLOR_THEME_DATA_KEY	color[]	used for the key (fallback to KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_KEY)	hicyan / cyan
KUBECOLOR_THEME_DATA_STRING	color	used when value is a string (fallback to KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_INFO)	hiyellow
KUBECOLOR_THEME_DATA_TRUE	color	used when value is true (fallback to KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_SUCCESS)	green
KUBECOLOR_THEME_DATA_FALSE	color	used when value is false (fallback to KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_DANGER)	red
KUBECOLOR_THEME_DATA_NUMBER	color	used when the value is a number (fallback to KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_PRIMARY)	magenta
KUBECOLOR_THEME_DATA_NULL	color	used when the value is null, nil, or none (fallback to KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_MUTED)	gray:italic
KUBECOLOR_THEME_DATA_QUANTITY	color	used when the value is a quantity, e.g "100m" or "5Gi" (fallback to KUBECOLOR_THEME_DATA_NUMBER)	magenta
KUBECOLOR_THEME_DATA_DURATION	color	used when the value is a duration, e.g "12m" or "1d12h"	none
KUBECOLOR_THEME_DATA_DURATIONFRESH	color	color used when the time value is under a certain delay (fallback to KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_SUCCESS)	green
KUBECOLOR_THEME_DATA_RATIO_ZERO	color	used for "0/0" (fallback to KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_MUTED)	gray:italic
KUBECOLOR_THEME_DATA_RATIO_EQUAL	color	used for "n/n", e.g "1/1"	none
KUBECOLOR_THEME_DATA_RATIO_UNEQUAL	color	used for "n/m", e.g "0/1" (fallback to KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_WARNING)	yellow
KUBECOLOR_THEME_STATUS_SUCCESS	color	used in status keywords, e.g "Running", "Ready" (fallback to KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_SUCCESS)	green
KUBECOLOR_THEME_STATUS_WARNING	color	used in status keywords, e.g "Terminating" (fallback to KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_WARNING)	yellow
KUBECOLOR_THEME_STATUS_ERROR	color	used in status keywords, e.g "Failed", "Unhealthy" (fallback to KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_DANGER)	red
KUBECOLOR_THEME_TABLE_HEADER	color	used on table headers (fallback to KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_INFO)	fg=white:#aaff00
KUBECOLOR_THEME_TABLE_COLUMNS	color[]	used on table columns when no other coloring applies such as status or duration coloring. The multiple colors are cycled based on column ID, from left to right. (fallback to [KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_INFO / KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_SECONDARY])	white / cyan
KUBECOLOR_THEME_STDERR_DEFAULT	color	default when no specific mapping is found for the output line (fallback to KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_INFO)	white
KUBECOLOR_THEME_STDERR_ERROR	color	e.g when text contains "error" (fallback to KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_DANGER)	fg=hi-yellow:bg=red:bold
KUBECOLOR_THEME_DESCRIBE_KEY	color[]	used on keys. The multiple colors are cycled based on indentation. (fallback to KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_KEY)	hicyan / cyan
KUBECOLOR_THEME_APPLY_CREATED	color	used on "deployment.apps/foo created" (fallback to KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_SUCCESS)	green
KUBECOLOR_THEME_APPLY_CONFIGURED	color	used on "deployment.apps/bar configured" (fallback to KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_WARNING)	yellow
KUBECOLOR_THEME_APPLY_UNCHANGED	color	used on "deployment.apps/quux unchanged" (fallback to KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_PRIMARY)	magenta
KUBECOLOR_THEME_APPLY_DRYRUN	color	used on "deployment.apps/quux created (dry-run)" (fallback to KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_SECONDARY)	cyan
KUBECOLOR_THEME_APPLY_FALLBACK	color	used when "kubectl apply" outputs unknown format (fallback to KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_SUCCESS)	green
KUBECOLOR_THEME_EXPLAIN_KEY	color[]	used on keys. The multiple colors are cycled based on indentation. (fallback to KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_KEY)	hicyan / cyan
KUBECOLOR_THEME_EXPLAIN_REQUIRED	color	used on the trailing "-required-" string (fallback to KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_DANGER)	red
KUBECOLOR_THEME_OPTIONS_FLAG	color	e.g "--kubeconfig" (fallback to KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_SECONDARY)	cyan
KUBECOLOR_THEME_VERSION_KEY	color[]	used on the key (fallback to KUBECOLOR_THEME_BASE_KEY)	hicyan / cyan

Config type: color

The color type supports a variety of formats. In its simplest form, you specify one of:

• Named colors, which are mapped to the 3-bit and 4-bit ANSI colors:

  black, red, green, brown, yellow, blue, magenta, purple, cyan, white, hiblack, lightblack, darkgray, gray, darkgrey, grey, hired, lightred, higreen, lightgreen, lime, hibrown, lightbrown, hiyellow, lightyellow, gold, hiblue, lightblue, himagenta, lightmagenta, hipurple, lightpurple, hicyan, lightcyan, hiwhite, lightwhite

  These colors depend on your terminal's color settings. So if your terminal is configured with "Solarized Dark" theme, then the red color name will be the "Solarized Dark red".

• A single 256-color number:

  • 5 (magenta)
  • 82 (a light lime color)
  • 240 (dark gray)

• Hexadecimal: (case insensitive)

  • #aaff00
  • aaff00
  • 0xaaff00
  • #af0
  • af0

• RGB, with values ranging from 0 to 255, in two different syntaxes:

  • 192, 255, 238
  • rgb(192, 255, 238)

• Raw escape data, in case you know what escape code you're looking for.

  • raw(53) (overlined)
  • raw(4;53) (underlined & overlined)

By default the value refers to the foreground color (text color). The full syntax would be fg=red But you can also set the background color by adding in bg=, such as bg=blue.

To set both foreground and background, you join together the colors with a colon :, like so: fg=red:bg=blue

In addition, you can also apply style modifiers:

• bold, or b: Bold text styling, such as this
• fuzzy: Faint text style (inverse of bold)
• italic, i: Italic text, such as this
• underline, or u: Underlined text, such as this
• blink: Blinking text. Not widely supported by terminals.
• fastblink: Rapid blinking text. Not widely supported by terminals.
• reverse, invert: Swaps foreground and background colors
• concealed, hidden, invisible: Hidden text. Not widely supported.
• strikethrough: Crossed out text, such as this

Here are some examples of settings colors as environment variables:

export KUBECOLOR_THEME_DATA_NULL="gray:italic"
export KUBECOLOR_THEME_TABLE_HEADER="fg=white:bold:underline"
export KUBECOLOR_THEME_STDERR_ERROR="fg=yellow:bg=red:bold"
export KUBECOLOR_THEME_STDERR_ERROR="#c0ffee"

Config type: color[]

Similar to the color type, but allows multiple separate colors to be applied. Commonly used to allow alternating colors on columns.

The colors are separated by a slash /.

Example:

export KUBECOLOR_THEME_TABLE_COLUMNS="red/green/blue"

Above represents a color[] value of 3 colors, where your columns' color would cycle those colors: red, green, blue, red, green, blue, red, etc.

You can of course use any color syntax, to for example have it cycle on background color with some style modifiers instead:

export KUBECOLOR_THEME_TABLE_COLUMNS="bg=red:underline/bg=green:italic/bg=blue:bold"

Color theme presets

We have some presets that come shipped with kubecolor:

Preset	Description
dark (default)	For when your terminal's background is dark.
light	For when your terminal's background is light/bright.
pre-0.0.21-dark	Original dark color scheme used before v0.0.21, as well as in the predecessor's (hidetatz/kubecolor) version.
pre-0.0.21-light	Original light color scheme used before v0.0.21, as well as in the predecessor's (hidetatz/kubecolor) version.
protanopia-dark	Color theme for Protanopia color blindness. For when your terminal's background is dark.
protanopia-light	Color theme for Protanopia color blindness. For when your terminal's background is light/bright.
deuteranopia-dark(*)	Color theme for Deuteranopia color blindness. For when your terminal's background is dark.
deuteranopia-light(*)	Color theme for Deuteranopia color blindness. For when your terminal's background is light/bright.
tritanopia-dark(*)	Color theme for Tritanopia color blindness. For when your terminal's background is dark.
tritanopia-light(*)	Color theme for Tritanopia color blindness. For when your terminal's background is light/bright.

Note

(*) As of version v0.3.0, both deuteranopia and tritanopia themes are the same as protanopia. They may differ in future versions when we better tune them. Set your configuration to match your color-blindness type so you will benefit of the future changes. We gladly accept suggestions on how to improve them.

Selecting preset can be done via the KUBECOLOR_PRESET environment variable, like so:

# Set color theme to dark
export KUBECOLOR_PRESET="dark"

# Set color theme to light
export KUBECOLOR_PRESET="light"

Config file

In addition to environment variables, you can configure kubecolor via a dedicated config file: ~/.kube/color.yaml

Example file (the values shows the default values):

# yaml-language-server: $schema=https://github.com/kubecolor/kubecolor/raw/main/config-schema.json

kubectl: kubectl # path to kubectl executable
preset: dark # color theme preset
objFreshThreshold: 0 # ages below this uses theme.data.durationfresh coloring

# Color theme options
theme:
  base:
    info: white # (color) general color for when things are informational
    primary: magenta # (color) general color for when things are focus
    secondary: cyan # (color) general color for when things are secondary focus
    success: green # (color) general color for when things are good
    warning: yellow # (color) general color for when things are wrong
    danger: red # (color) general color for when things are bad
    muted: gray:italic # (color) general color for when things are less relevant
    key: hicyan / cyan # (color[]) general color for keys (fallback to [theme.base.secondary])
  default: green # (color) default when no specific mapping is found for the command
  data:
    key: hicyan / cyan # (color[]) used for the key (fallback to theme.base.key)
    string: hiyellow # (color) used when value is a string (fallback to theme.base.info)
    "true": green # (color) used when value is true (fallback to theme.base.success)
    "false": red # (color) used when value is false (fallback to theme.base.danger)
    number: magenta # (color) used when the value is a number (fallback to theme.base.primary)
    "null": gray:italic # (color) used when the value is null, nil, or none (fallback to theme.base.muted)
    quantity: magenta # (color) used when the value is a quantity, e.g "100m" or "5Gi" (fallback to theme.data.number)
    duration: none # (color) used when the value is a duration, e.g "12m" or "1d12h"
    durationfresh: green # (color) color used when the time value is under a certain delay (fallback to theme.base.success)
    ratio:
      zero: gray:italic # (color) used for "0/0" (fallback to theme.base.muted)
      equal: none # (color) used for "n/n", e.g "1/1"
      unequal: yellow # (color) used for "n/m", e.g "0/1" (fallback to theme.base.warning)
  status:
    success: green # (color) used in status keywords, e.g "Running", "Ready" (fallback to theme.base.success)
    warning: yellow # (color) used in status keywords, e.g "Terminating" (fallback to theme.base.warning)
    error: red # (color) used in status keywords, e.g "Failed", "Unhealthy" (fallback to theme.base.danger)
  table:
    header: fg=white:#aaff00 # (color) used on table headers (fallback to theme.base.info)
    columns: white / cyan # (color[]) used on table columns when no other coloring applies such as status or duration coloring. The multiple colors are cycled based on column ID, from left to right. (fallback to [theme.base.info / theme.base.secondary])
  stderr:
    default: white # (color) default when no specific mapping is found for the output line (fallback to theme.base.info)
    error: fg=hi-yellow:bg=red:bold # (color) e.g when text contains "error" (fallback to theme.base.danger)
  describe:
    key: hicyan / cyan # (color[]) used on keys. The multiple colors are cycled based on indentation. (fallback to theme.base.key)
  apply:
    created: green # (color) used on "deployment.apps/foo created" (fallback to theme.base.success)
    configured: yellow # (color) used on "deployment.apps/bar configured" (fallback to theme.base.warning)
    unchanged: magenta # (color) used on "deployment.apps/quux unchanged" (fallback to theme.base.primary)
    dryrun: cyan # (color) used on "deployment.apps/quux created (dry-run)" (fallback to theme.base.secondary)
    fallback: green # (color) used when "kubectl apply" outputs unknown format (fallback to theme.base.success)
  explain:
    key: hicyan / cyan # (color[]) used on keys. The multiple colors are cycled based on indentation. (fallback to theme.base.key)
    required: red # (color) used on the trailing "-required-" string (fallback to theme.base.danger)
  options:
    flag: cyan # (color) e.g "--kubeconfig" (fallback to theme.base.secondary)
  version:
    key: hicyan / cyan # (color[]) used on the key (fallback to theme.base.key)

You can also override this using the KUBECOLOR_CONFIG environment variable:

export KUBECOLOR_CONFIG="$HOME/.config/kubecolor.yaml"

Supported kubectl version

Because kubecolor internally calls kubectl command, if you are using unsupported kubectl version, it's also not supported by kubecolor. Kubernetes version support policy can be found in official doc.

kubectl plugins

Even if kubectl supports plugin feature, it is not supported by kubecolor, including Krew. It means you can use plugins from kubecolor (e.g. you can do kubecolor plugin_name xxx), but the result won't be colorized.

Contributions

Always welcome. Just opening an issue should be also grateful.

Note that some files are generated in this repo. To run them, use make:

# Regenerate ./config-schema.json
make config-schema.json

# Run integration test corpus, found in ./test/corpus/*.txt
make corpus

# Regenerate test results in integration test corpus
make corpus-update

# Regenerate screenshots used in README.md
make docs

# Generate configs (you currently have to copy-paste the results)
go run ./internal/cmd/configdoc

Versioning

This project tries to follow SemVer 2.0.0 on the command-line interface (CLI), i.e which flags and environment variables it accepts.

We do not however promise compatibility on the Go source code. If you import kubecolor's Go module and use it as a library, then things may unexpectedly break within minor or patch version changes.

Warning

As we have not yet reached v1.0.0, we may have some breaking changes in cases where it is deemed necessary.

LICENSE

MIT

Author

This project is a heavily modified version of the original KubeColor, archived at https://github.com/hidetatz/kubecolor

@kubecolor