How can I configure the color of 'ls' directory under zsh

Solution 1:

Assuming you are using GNU ls, you can specify the colors with the environment variable LS_COLORS (note that this is a GNU ls feature and not specific to zsh).

GNU Coreutils has a program called dircolors to help you convert an easy to edit configuration file into a proper (complicated) LS_COLORS variable. See man dircolors for the command, and man dir_colors for the configuration file syntax.

You can

1. use dircolors --print-database >! dircolors.default to save the defaults (it contains some explanation text) and then modify it.
2. Google for fancy pre-configured dircolors files (such as this https://github.com/seebi/dircolors-solarized (I've got no relation to this)).

Once done, you'll need dircolors to turn that into a proper LS_COLORS. Note that dircolors outputs in bash and csh formats, for zsh you should use the bash-formatted output.

PS: Use ls --color=auto instead of ls --color=tty.

Solution 2:

The following works for me in zsh 5.7.1 (x86_64-apple-darwin19.0)).

These lines in my .zshrc without any additional incantations configure the colours for ls:

export CLICOLOR=1
export LSCOLORS=ExGxBxDxCxEgEdxbxgxcxd
alias ll="ls -alG"

For the configuration options you can use in LSCOLORS you can simply run man ls and find the section for LSCOLORS. CLICOLOR is explained there as well.