Colors in Midnight Commander





Last Updated on 03/18/2013 by dboth

I like using Midnight Commander (mc) and I like using the green on black terminal color scheme in Konsole. Unfortunately the color schemes for Midnight Commander seem to be logically combined with the terminal colors in some way that makes them really ugly and hard to read unless you are using the default black on white terminal color scheme.

The man page for mc does have a section on colors, but it does not seem to discuss why the colors are logically bashed together to create the nastiness I see on the screen.  However I found this specific color scheme that does seem to work nicely with my favorite green on black color scheme and it can be used as a staring point for your own modifications.

Simply add the following two lines to the end of your ~/.mc/ini file:

[Colors]
base_color=lightgray,green:normal=green,default:selected=white,
 gray:marked=yellow,default:markselect=yellow,gray:directory=blue,
 default:executable=brightgreen,default:link=cyan,
 default:device=brightmagenta,default:special=lightgray,
 default:errors=red,default:reverse=green,default:gauge=green,
 default:input=white,gray:dnormal=green,gray:dfocus=brightgreen,
 gray:dhotnormal=cyan,gray:dhotfocus=brightcyan,gray:menu=green,
 default:menuhot=cyan,default:menusel=green,gray:menuhotsel=cyan,
 default:helpnormal=cyan,default:editnormal=green,default:editbold=blue,
 default:editmarked=gray,blue:stalelink=red,default

Note: Starting with the second line above, “base_color” the color definition should be all one line  and should have no whitespace when you add it to the ~/.mc/ini file.

I found this information on Ajnasz’ blog http://ajnasz.hu/blog. The URL for this specific information is http://ajnasz.hu/blog/20080101/midnight-commander-coloring.





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