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Ole
Asked: 2019-11-09 13:55:36 +0800 CST

Change the color of directories in GNOME Terminal

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When I type ls in gnome terminal directories show up highlighted in green and the text is blue, making it very hard to read the directories.

I've tried Edit → Preferences and playing around with the color schemes, but the green highlight stays in place.

screenshot of terminal showing green highlighting

gnome command-line gnome-terminal ls

1 Answers

  1. I know your post is old but I just went through this myself and thought I would share what I know.

    My ls output was giving me the same thing but only on my partition where I store my data. That partition is an NTFS partition (some call it a "Windows type partition"). The ls command give different colors on a "Windows partition" and that's why I was getting the green highlights. I fixed my problem by adding a line to the bottom of my .bashrc file. The highlights went away and I was left with light blue for directories and green for files. Here's how I fixed it.

    1. Shut down all open terminal emulators
    2. Back up your .bashrc file (go to your home folder and press Ctrl-h to see your hidden / "." files and folders
    3. Edit your .bashrc file
    4. Add the following line to the bottom of .bashrc

    export LS_COLORS='ow=01;36;40'

    1. Save your .bashrc file. Some people say you have to run "source ~/.bashrc" to get your changes to take, but I never had to.
    2. Open your terminal emulator and see if the highlights are gone

    Hope that helps!

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