tintify

Easy terminal text colors for Python. No dependencies.

from tintify import tint, Tint

print(tint("Success!", "green", bold=True))
print(Tint.RED + "Error:" + Tint.RESET + " something went wrong")

• 16 standard colors, 36 named colors from the 256-color palette, any palette index, hex, and RGB
• Bold, dim, italic, underline, and strikethrough
• Respects NO_COLOR and FORCE_COLOR, and turns color off automatically when output isn't a terminal
• Fully typed

Installation

pip install tintify

Requires Python 3.9 or newer.

Two ways to color text

tint(): color a piece of text

from tintify import tint

print(tint("hello", "red"))
print(tint("hello", "sky_blue", bg="navy"))
print(tint("hello", "#ff8800", bold=True, underline=True))
print(tint("hello", (255, 136, 0)))   # RGB
print(tint("hello", 208))             # 256-color palette index

tint() wraps the text and resets the style at the end, so colors never leak into the rest of your output. It also checks whether color should be shown at all (see Turning color off).

tint(
    text,
    fg=None,          # text color
    bg=None,          # background color
    *,
    bold=False,
    dim=False,
    italic=False,
    underline=False,
    strike=False,
    force=None,       # True = always color, False = never, None = auto-detect
)

Tint: constants you can drop in anywhere

If you already build strings with + or f-strings, use the Tint constants instead. No function call needed:

from tintify import Tint

print(Tint.RED + "Hello" + Tint.RESET)
print(f"{Tint.BOLD}{Tint.BG_NAVY}{Tint.GOLD} Warning {Tint.RESET}")

Every color name below has a Tint.NAME and a Tint.BG_NAME constant.

Note: Tint constants are plain strings, so they are always output, even when NO_COLOR is set or output is redirected to a file. Always end with Tint.RESET. If you want automatic detection, use tint().

Colors

Standard colors: black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, white, plus a bright_ version of each (e.g. bright_red). These follow your terminal's theme.

Named 256-palette colors:

Color names ignore case, spaces, and hyphens: "Sky Blue", "sky-blue", and "sky_blue" all work.

Anything else:

• A palette index from 0 to 255, e.g. tint("hi", 208)
• A hex string, e.g. "#ff8800" or "#f80"
• An RGB tuple, e.g. (255, 136, 0)

See every named color in your own terminal:

python -m tintify

Or get the list in code:

from tintify import available_colors
print(available_colors())

Custom colors

Register your own names (for example, your brand colors) and use them like any built-in color:

from tintify import register_color, tint, Tint

register_color("brand", "#5a2ee0")
register_color("brand_light", (180, 160, 255))

print(tint("Acme CLI", "brand", bold=True))
print(Tint.fg("brand") + "also works here" + Tint.RESET)

Built-in names can't be overridden.

Turning color off

tint() decides whether to output color using these rules, in order:

1. force=True / force=False passed to tint(): always or never.
2. NO_COLOR environment variable is set: no color.
3. FORCE_COLOR environment variable is set: color.
4. Otherwise: color only if output is going to a terminal (not a file or pipe).

You can check this yourself with colors_enabled():

import sys
from tintify import colors_enabled

if colors_enabled(sys.stderr):
    ...

Terminal support

• The 16 standard colors and the styles work in almost every terminal.
• The 256-palette colors and palette indexes work in nearly all modern terminals, including macOS Terminal, iTerm2, Windows Terminal, VS Code, and most Linux terminals.
• Hex and RGB values use 24-bit "truecolor", which most modern terminals support. Older terminals may show a close match or ignore the color.

License

MIT