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Help Text Now Respects Your Terminal Theme

· 2 min read
Erik Osterman
Erik Osterman
Founder @ Cloud Posse

Atmos help text now automatically adapts to your configured theme, providing a consistent and visually cohesive experience across all commands. Whether you're using a dark theme like Dracula or a light theme like GitHub, help output will match your terminal's color scheme.

What Changed​

Previously, help text used a fixed color scheme that didn't respect your terminal theme settings. Now, when you run any --help command, the output automatically uses colors from your configured theme.

How It Works​

The theme system applies to all help output:

# Help text uses your configured theme
atmos terraform plan --help
atmos describe stacks --help
atmos --help

If you have a theme configured in atmos.yaml or via the ATMOS_THEME environment variable, all help text will automatically use those colors for syntax highlighting, headings, and examples.

Force Color Output​

For screenshot generation or CI/CD environments, you can force colored output even when not connected to a TTY:

# Force color output for screenshots
atmos --help --force-color

# Or use environment variable
ATMOS_FORCE_COLOR=true atmos terraform plan --help

This ensures consistent, colorful output regardless of the execution environment.

Configuration​

Set your theme in atmos.yaml:

settings:
  terminal:
    theme: dracula

Or use an environment variable:

export ATMOS_THEME=solarized-dark

Learn More​

Get Involved​