Use LS_COLORS (not LSCOLORS) on Mac OS

Solution 1:

Neither of those variables has any special meaning to zsh. They are solely used by ls, which is not an internal program to zsh. However, you have two ls at your disposal on macos:

The ls which comes with the OS, is the BSD variant, and as you can see from the man page, it reacts on LSCOLORS, provided that coloring is enabled (CLICOLOR="Yes").

Then you can install the Gnu Tools on your Mac, which brings you GNU ls (depending on how you installed them, invoked via ls or via gls), and this ls obeys the variable LS_COLORS.

Hence, it all depends on which ls you are using...