The Mutt E-Mail Client : Configuration : Using color and mono video attributes
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3.7. Using color and mono video attributes

Usage: color object foreground background [ regexp ]
Usage: color index foreground background pattern
Usage: uncolor index pattern [ pattern ... ]

If your terminal supports color, you can spice up Mutt by creating your own color scheme. To define the color of an object (type of information), you must specify both a foreground color and a background color (it is not possible to only specify one or the other).

object can be one of:

foreground and background can be one of the following:

foreground can optionally be prefixed with the keyword bright to make the foreground color boldfaced (e.g., brightred).

If your terminal supports it, the special keyword default can be used as a transparent color. The value brightdefault is also valid. If Mutt is linked against the S-Lang library, you also need to set the COLORFGBG environment variable to the default colors of your terminal for this to work; for example (for Bourne-like shells):

set COLORFGBG="green;black"
export COLORFGBG

Note: The S-Lang library requires you to use the lightgray and brown keywords instead of white and yellow when setting this variable.

Note: The uncolor command can be applied to the index object only. It removes entries from the list. You must specify the same pattern specified in the color command for it to be removed. The pattern ``*'' is a special token which means to clear the color index list of all entries.

Mutt also recognizes the keywords color0, color1, ..., colorN-1 (N being the number of colors supported by your terminal). This is useful when you remap the colors for your display (for example by changing the color associated with color2 for your xterm), since color names may then lose their normal meaning.

If your terminal does not support color, it is still possible change the video attributes through the use of the ``mono'' command:

Usage: mono <object> <attribute> [ regexp ]
Usage: mono index attribute pattern
Usage: unmono index pattern [ pattern ... ]

where attribute is one of the following:


The Mutt E-Mail Client : Configuration : Using color and mono video attributes
Previous: Keyboard macros
Next: Ignoring (weeding) unwanted message headers