How do I reset the colors of my terminal?

Question

Help! Somehow my terminal looks like this:

enter image description here

It's nearly impossible to read the text. How can I fix it without exiting the terminal?

You can sometimes "accidentally" get this by using cat on a binary file. — Nathan Osman, Apr 05 '14 at 04:22
I just tried to cat a binary file, was quite an experience... — Aditya, Apr 06 '14 at 01:00

Nathan Osman · Accepted Answer · 2014-04-05T04:26:08.063

51

The likely cause of this problem are ANSI Escape Codes. These allow scripts to change the foreground and background color of the terminal. You can even mimic the colors of the screenshot above by running the following command:

echo -e '\E[32;46m'

To reset the terminal colors, use the following command:

tput init

According to the manpage:

    init  If the terminfo database is present and an entry for the user's
          terminal exists (see -Ttype, above), the following will occur:

          (1) if present, the terminal's initialization strings will be
              output as detailed in the terminfo(5) section on Tabs and
              Initialization,

          (2) any delays (e.g., newline) specified in the entry will be
              set in the tty driver,

          (3) tabs expansion will be turned on or off according to the
              specification in the entry, and

          (4) if tabs are not  expanded, standard  tabs  will  be  set
              (every 8 spaces).

          If an entry does not contain the information needed for any of
          the four above activities, that activity will silently be
          skipped.

This should restore your terminal to its original colors.

edited Apr 05 '14 at 04:26

answered Apr 05 '14 at 04:18

Nathan Osman

32,155

Could you just close it and open it again? – Sparhawk Apr 05 '14 at 04:42
1

Yes, but then all of my environment variables would be lost. – Nathan Osman Apr 05 '14 at 04:47
Good point. +1. – Sparhawk Apr 05 '14 at 04:47
4

reset will also work but I think it'll also reset the environment variables. – Apr 05 '14 at 18:28
The reset command will not reset the environment variables. – Score_Under Aug 04 '19 at 12:39
1

Can you please amend this answer to also cover tput setaf 7 && tput setab 0 from comments further down? It helped me when tput init did not – robbat2 Aug 07 '19 at 22:57

Avinash Raj · Answer 2 · 2014-04-05T05:58:27.057

28

You can try this command also.It will reset your terminal color.

tput sgr0

enter image description here

edited Apr 05 '14 at 05:58

answered Apr 05 '14 at 04:29

Avinash Raj

78,556

3

This one was the one that worked for me. The accepted answer did nothing, in my case. – Henrik Feb 28 '21 at 12:05
The accepted answer also failed for me, both echo -e '\E[32;46m'; tput init did absolutely nothing. – ideasman42 Jul 24 '22 at 04:51

score 6 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 28 '18 at 21:23

6

If you find your terminal in a state that none of reset, tput init, nor tput sgr0 can fix, try tput setaf 7 && tput setab 0 to force the text to white on black.

answered Dec 28 '18 at 21:23

rymo

161

1

this worked on my vscode terminal when the other methods didn't – Vorsprung Jun 21 '19 at 15:11
Thanks! This fixed it in my terminal as well, useful still! – robbat2 Aug 07 '19 at 22:57
1

sgr0 is the code that will reset everything back to normal (Whatever normal is) – Eric Aug 26 '22 at 08:36

How do I reset the colors of my terminal?

3 Answers3

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