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COLORTERM env variable

Category: device · Baseline: modern

$COLORTERM
The COLORTERM environment variable indicates that the terminal supports truecolor (24-bit) output beyond what TERM implies. The de facto standard values are truecolor and 24bit; either signals that applications can safely emit SGR 38;2;R;G;B and SGR 48;2;R;G;B sequences. Because TERM values rarely encode truecolor capability accurately and terminfo's RGB capability is unevenly populated, COLORTERM has become the most reliable runtime hint for truecolor support. Most modern terminals — kitty, WezTerm, Ghostty, foot, iTerm2, Alacritty, Windows Terminal — set it automatically.
How this is testedmanual
Manual verification required — no automated probe available.

The same probe runs against headless backends (via Termless) and real terminal apps (via a daemon launched in each terminal). This lets us distinguish parser correctness from rendering correctness.

Supported by 0 of 14 backends (0%)

Terminal Applications

TerminalVersionSupportNotes
iTerm23.6.9? unknown
Ghostty1.3.1? unknown
Terminal.app2.15? unknown
Kitty0.46.2? unknown
VS Code1.113.0? unknown
Warp0.2026.03.18.08.24.03? unknown
Cursor2.6.21? unknown

Headless Backends

Parser correctness only — a means the parser accepts the sequence.

BackendVersionSupportNotes
Alacritty0.26.0? unknown
vt100.js0.2.1? unknown
vterm0.2.0? unknown
WezTerm0.1.0-fork.5? unknown
xterm.js5.5.0? unknown