Unable to get any color, despite --color=always

[M4c1ek]

What is the problem you are having with rclone?

I see screenshots like this, and have read about –color option, but no matter what I do, my rclone is always monochrome. I have tried with –color=always and –color ALWAYS (I’ve seen both forms in posts), I tried different terminals (alacritty, xterm, gnome-terminal). Nothing helps.

If it helps, my $TERM is xterm-256color.

Run the command 'rclone version' and share the full output of the command.

rclone v1.71.2

• os/version: arch (64 bit)
• os/kernel: 6.17.5-arch1-1 (x86_64)
• os/type: linux
• os/arch: amd64
• go/version: go1.25.3 X:nodwarf5
• go/linking: dynamic
• go/tags: none

Which cloud storage system are you using? (eg Google Drive)

Google Drive

The command you were trying to run (eg rclone copy /tmp remote:tmp)

# For example, trying to match screenshot on dedupe docs page.
rclone lsl gdrive:

# regular sync
rclone sync --progress --color ALWAYS gdrive: /home/foo/GoogleDrive

Please run 'rclone config redacted' and share the full output. If you get command not found, please make sure to update rclone.

```
[gdrive]
type = drive
scope = drive
token = XXX
team_drive =
```

A log from the command that you were trying to run with the -vv flag

```
2025/10/29 23:10:30 DEBUG : rclone: Version "v1.71.2" starting with parameters ["rclone" "--color=always" "-vv" "lsl" "gdrive:"]
2025/10/29 23:10:30 DEBUG : Creating backend with remote "gdrive:"
2025/10/29 23:10:30 DEBUG : Using config file from "/home/maciek/.config/rclone/rclone.conf"
2025/10/29 23:10:30 DEBUG : Google drive root '': 'root_folder_id = XXX-REDACTED-XXX' - save this in the config to speed up startup
```

The rest of the entries were the file listings.

[ncw (Nick Craig-Wood)]

Rclone is not very colourful. The examples you gave don't use colour

rclone config does as does rclone ncdu and rclone bisync

The colours in the docs are caused by the syntax colouring in the markdown converter (Hugo) and are not representative.

[M4c1ek]

Ah… pity. But thanks for the reply!

Now that I recall, I DID see color in rclone config, but that was a few days ago, so forgot.

Are there plans to add more coloring?

I currently “rolled my own”, using grcat; of most interest to me is during a –dry-run to show the types of actions encountered, to highlight risk/danger of operations encountered (e.g., copy → green, delete → red, etc)