Ever use a Linux or non-Mac UNIX machine and notice the fancy colors different file names have when using the ls command in the terminal?
Well now you can have the very same thing in Tiger’s terminal 🙂
To enable this, follow these steps:
1) Open Terminal. Open the menu ‘Terminal > Window Settings’ and select ‘Color’ from the drop-down menu. Make sure “Disable ANSI Color” is unchecked.
2) Move to your home directory by typing the command:
cd ~
and hit return.
3) Now we need to create or add to your .profile to make the change. Enter the command vi .profile to open the file (or create it if it does not exist) in the vi text editor.
4) Whether you had an existing .profile does not matter – in either case, add the line alias ls="ls -G" and save the file.
To save a file in vi, simply hit the escape key and type :wq and hit return. This will save and then exit from the vi text editor.
5) Type exit and hit return, then quit Terminal.
6) Open the Terminal back up, enter the command ls, and wa-lah! Colors! Weeeee!! You will now have colors just like a typical linux/UNIX set up.
Hope you enjoy this, and let me know if there is any questions!
(To disable colors, simply remove the text we added to .profile)