Repository navigation
Table headers are low contrast on default terminal app theme #8292
Description
Describe the bug
I am using gh 2.38.0 (installed via Homebrew) in macOS Sonoma's Terminal.app with a black-on-white theme. Styled text produced by gh is often very low-contrast against the background, and some searching pointed me to gh's GLAMOUR_STYLE environment variable for changing the colors. Unfortunately, no matter what I set GLAMOUR_STYLE to — light, dark, notty, or dracula — the output colors remain unchanged and unreadable.
Output from gh repo list (no GLAMOUR_STYLE):
Output from GLAMOUR_STYLE=light gh repo list:
Output from GLAMOUR_STYLE=dark gh repo list:
Activity
samcoe commentedon Nov 6, 2023
Hi @jwodder sorry you are experiencing this, but I think there is a misunderstanding of the purpose of the
GLAMOUR_STYLEenvironment variable. Fromgh help environment:The
gh repo listcommand is not rendering markdown and thus theGLAMOUR_STYLEdoes not come into effect. Commands such asgh repo viewdo render markdown and you will be able to see the effect of changing that environment variable.Having said that I agree that the output you are seeing is quite low contrast. We just introduced the table headers so perhaps we need to pick a different color to use there. Are you using one of the default color schemes in the terminal app? Or is this a color scheme you found/created?
jwodder commentedon Nov 6, 2023
@samcoe You're right,
GLAMOUR_STYLEdoes indeed work forgh repo view.It's the unmodified builtin "Basic" theme (though it's possible the theme settings were carried over from an earlier macOS version and the theme now looks different in a fresh Sonoma install).
[-]`GLAMOUR_STYLE` not doing anything in Terminal.app[/-][+]Table headers are low contrast on default terminal app theme[/+]andyfeller commentedon Apr 15, 2025
@jwodder : I wanted to circle back to this issue as
v2.70.0release has changes to natively fix this issue based upon the light / dark appearance of the background. If you had a moment, I'd appreciate your thoughts on the new experience as we strive to improve our user experience! 🙇jwodder commentedon Apr 15, 2025
@andyfeller If I run
gh repo listin a dark-on-light Terminal.app session, the results look fine:However, if I run the command inside a GNU Screen (v5.0.0) or tmux (v3.5a) session,
ghseems to default to assuming a light-on-dark theme, which results in barely-visible table headers:Note that I've since changed my actual day-to-day terminal environment to light-on-dark, so either way, this issue doesn't effect me normally anymore.
yousufmirpro commentedon Apr 22, 2025
build(deps): update cli/cli to v2.72.0
andyfeller commentedon May 12, 2025
@jwodder : Thank you for the follow up, here 🤔
This second screenshot had the new
accessible_colorssetting /GH_ACCESSIBLE_COLORSenv var set, correct? That or an older version would be the only reasons I could see the headers looking wrong here.jwodder commentedon May 12, 2025
@andyfeller I did not set that envvar, nor have I done anything with that setting. I think I was using v2.68 of
ghwhen I took those screenshots.