ANSI Terminal Color Formatting

3.3.0 · active · verified Sat Mar 28

Termcolor is a Python library that provides ANSI color formatting for output in the terminal. It supports 16 colors, 256 colors, and 24-bit true color modes, along with various text attributes like bold, underline, and italic. It is actively maintained with frequent updates, currently at version 3.3.0.

Warnings

breaking Termcolor has incrementally dropped support for older Python versions. Version 3.2.0 dropped support for Python 3.9, version 2.5.0 dropped Python 3.8, and version 2.4.0 dropped Python 3.7. The current minimum required Python version is 3.10.
Fix: Ensure your project runs on Python 3.10 or newer, or pin `termcolor` to an older version compatible with your Python environment.
gotcha The handling of `FORCE_COLOR`, `NO_COLOR`, and `ANSI_COLORS_DISABLED` environment variables changed in version 3.0.0. Prior to 3.0.0, empty string values for these variables might have been interpreted differently. As of 3.0.0, these variables (and `no_color`/`force_color` function parameters) are only applied when present and contain a non-empty string.
Fix: Ensure environment variables like `NO_COLOR` are set to a non-empty string (e.g., '1' or 'true') to properly disable coloring, and be aware of the precedence order where function parameters override environment variables.
gotcha New text attributes and color modes were introduced in recent versions. The `italic` attribute was added in 3.3.0. True color (RGB tuple) support was added in version 3.1.0. Attempting to use these features with older `termcolor` versions will result in errors or lack of intended formatting.
Fix: Upgrade to `termcolor` 3.1.0 or newer for true color support, and 3.3.0 or newer for the `italic` attribute. Ensure your terminal emulator also supports these features.

Install

pip install termcolor Install latest version

Imports

colored
```
from termcolor import colored
```
cprint
```
from termcolor import cprint
```

Quickstart

Demonstrates basic text coloring, background colors, text attributes (bold, underline, italic), and true color (RGB) support. It also shows how to print to `sys.stderr`.

import sys
from termcolor import colored, cprint
import os

# Basic colored text
print(colored("Hello, World!", "red"))

# Colored text with background and attributes
cprint("Hello, colorful world!", "green", "on_yellow", attrs=["bold", "underline"])

# True color (RGB) example (requires a compatible terminal and termcolor >= 3.1.0)
# You can also specify 0-255 RGB ints via a tuple for color and on_color
if os.environ.get('FORCE_COLOR', '0') == '1': # Check for forced color for consistent demo
    cprint("True color text!", (100, 150, 250), (50, 60, 70), attrs=["italic"])
else:
    print(colored("Italic attribute and true color (RGB) requires termcolor >= 3.3.0 and >= 3.1.0 respectively, and a compatible terminal.", "white", attrs=["dark"]))

# Print to stderr
cprint("This is an error message.", "red", attrs=["reverse"], file=sys.stderr)

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