Trying to reach terminal constancy using ANSI only colors

I really like spending as much of my day as a software engineer in the terminal. I really wanted to get all the things to match colors, themes, etc. Now keep in mind this doesn't always solve all the things but it is a good step forward.

Goal

• Use terminal colors across vi, tmux, bat, fzf, and most other terminal applications.

Terminal setup

I really like the alacritty terminal and I needed to find a color style that works for me. I ended up with something like this:

schemes:
  dark: &dark
    primary:
      background: "#2B2B2B"
      foreground: "#BBBBBB"

    normal:
      black: "#252525"
      red: "#DB5451"
      green: "#548C26"
      yellow: "#A89022"
      blue: "#3A91CF"
      magenta: "#A575BA"
      cyan: "#009191"
      white: "#CCCCCC"
    bright:
      black: "#666666"
      white: "#FFFFFF"

  light: &light
    primary:
      background: "#E2E2E2"
      foreground: "#666666"

    normal:
      black: "#FFFFFF"
      red: "#DB5451"
      green: "#548C26"
      yellow: "#A89022"
      blue: "#3A91CF"
      magenta: "#A575BA"
      cyan: "#009191"
      white: "#AAAAAA"
    bright:
      black: "#666666"
      white: "#000000"

colors: *dark

I can switch between dark and light mode by changing the colors: value. And because alacritty can do live reload of the config file. A simple script to modify that value allows for light and dark mode switching via the command line. And because I am using all ANSI colors for things everything changes in real time.

Vim setup

I created a color theme for vim based off vim-dim

Using vim-plug I load the plugin like this:

call plug#begin('~/.config/nvim/plugged'
  Plug 'casonadams/vim-dim'
call plug#end()

colorscheme dim

Be sure that set termguicolors is not in the vimrc or init.vim file.

shell setup

I use fzf and bat for fuzzy searching to set it to use ANSI colors do the following in a bashrc or zshrc file.

snippet

export BAT_THEME="ansi"

export FZF_DEFAULT_OPTS="
--inline-info \
--layout=reverse \
--ansi \
--color=16 \

full working example

export BAT_THEME="ansi"
export FZF_DEFAULT_COMMAND="fd -uu"
export FZF_CTRL_T_COMMAND="${FZF_DEFAULT_COMMAND} --type file"
export FZF_ALT_C_COMMAND="${FZF_DEFAULT_COMMAND} --type directory"
export FZF_DEFAULT_OPTS="
--inline-info \
--layout=reverse \
--ansi \
--color=16 \
--preview-window=:hidden \
--preview '([[ -f {} ]] \
    && (bat --style=numbers --color=always {} \
    || cat {})) \
    || ([[ -d {} ]] && (tree -C {} | less)) \
    || echo {} 2> /dev/null | head -200' \
--bind '?:toggle-preview'
"

tmux fun (iterm dimming)

Modifying tmux doesn't need to happen, but this is a fun trick to add using this color idea.

• Currently this only looks good in dark mode

set -g pane-border-style fg=colour8,bg=colour237
set -g pane-active-border-style fg=blue,bg=colour237

set-window-option -g window-active-style bg=terminal
set-window-option -g window-style bg=colour237

full tmux color settings from images

######### THEME  ##########
set -g status-style bg=colour8,fg=colour7
setw -g clock-mode-colour green

set -g mode-style bg=blue,fg=colour7
set -g message-style bg=colour8,fg=colour7
set -g message-command-style bg=colour8,fg=colour7

set-option -g status-right-length 100
set-option -g status-left-length 100
set -g status-left " #{?pane_synchronized, ¤ ,}#{?window_zoomed_flag, ↕ ,}[#S-#{window_active_clients}] "

set -g status-right "#(cd #{pane_current_path}; git branch --show-current) #H "

set -g pane-border-style fg=colour8,bg=colour237
set -g pane-active-border-style fg=blue,bg=colour237

set-window-option -g window-active-style bg=terminal
set-window-option -g window-style bg=colour237