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Seth
Asked: 2014-04-09 17:22:48 +0800 CST

How do I enable fancy apt colours and progress bars?

  • 772

I've heard that apt has a new fancy colour and progress bar feature, but that I have to manually enable it.

How do I do this?

apt

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    For 14.04 and newer:

    Make a file in: /etc/apt/apt.conf.d:

    sudoedit /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99progressbar

    Then add these contents:

    Dpkg::Progress-Fancy "1";

    And save the file.

    Then if your umask was not 0027, (i.e. it might also be 0023), then also set this new file's permissions to 644 (i.e. -rw-r--r--) as follows:

    $ chmod 644 99progressbar

    (Without this permission correction things like Debian's reportbug will stop working.)

    Now enjoy apt progress bars in all their glory:

    enter image description here

    You can use them with these commands for a nice new apt experience:

    apt update
apt install
apt upgrade

    Run apt by itself for the list of commands. Colors are enabled by default for apt, and do not affect apt-get.

    Colors:

    You can also tweak the color of the progress bar by adding this as well:

    Dpkg::Progress-Fancy::Progress-Bg "%1b[40m";

    The colors are based on ANSI Color codes, look at this chart as a reference.

    Sources:

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  2. The -o option allows to change the behavior temporarily. I described it here:

    It's just not an apt-get default, but also available for apt-get, run it with

    -o Dpkg::Progress-Fancy="1"

    for example

    sudo apt-get -o Dpkg::Progress-Fancy="1" install alpine-pico
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  3. For default colors

    In addition to Jorge Castro's excellent answer, you can add an extra line to the /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99progressbar file:

    Dpkg::Progress-Fancy "1";
APT::Color "1";

    This will enable the default colors for apt. I found it by accident while reading the apt man page:

    The apt command is meant to be pleasant for end users and does not need to be backward compatible like apt-get(8). Therefore some options are different:

    • The option DPkgPM::Progress-Fancy is enabled.

    • The option APT::Color is enabled.

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