Crate colored_text 

A library for adding colors and styles to terminal text output.

This library provides a simple and intuitive way to add colors and styles to text in terminal applications. It works with both string literals and owned strings, and supports various text colors, background colors, and text styles.

Styling is composed before rendering, so chained calls behave predictably: the most recent foreground/background color wins, text styles accumulate, and ANSI escape codes are emitted only once when the styled value is displayed.

Examples

use colored_text::Colorize;

// Basic color usage
println!("{}", "Red text".red());
println!("{}", "Blue background".on_blue());

// Combining styles
println!("{}", "Bold green text".green().bold());

// Using with format! macro
let name = "World";
println!("{}", format!("Hello, {}!", name.blue().bold()));

// RGB and Hex colors
println!("{}", "RGB color".rgb(255, 128, 0));
println!("{}", "Hex color".hex("#ff8000"));

// Clearing styles
println!("{}", "Plain text".red().bold().clear());

Features

• Basic colors (red, green, blue, yellow, etc.)
• Background colors
• Bright color variants
• Text styles (bold, dim, italic, underline)
• RGB, HSL, and Hex color support
• Composed style chaining
• Works with format! macro
• Explicit runtime color modes

Input Handling

• RGB values must be in range 0-255 (enforced at compile time via u8 type)
• Attempting to use RGB values > 255 will result in a compile error
• Hex color codes can be provided with or without the # prefix in 3-digit shorthand or 6-digit full form
• Invalid hex codes (wrong length or invalid characters) return plain unstyled text
• All color methods are guaranteed to return a valid string, never panicking

use colored_text::Colorize;

// Valid hex codes (with or without #)
println!("{}", "Valid hex".hex("#ff8000"));
println!("{}", "Also valid".hex("ff8000"));
println!("{}", "Shorthand".hex("#f80"));

// Invalid hex codes return plain text
println!("{}", "Invalid hex".hex("xyz")); // Returns plain text
println!("{}", "Wrong length".hex("#1234")); // Returns plain text

Runtime Color Control

The crate supports three runtime modes via ColorMode:

• ColorMode::Auto enables styling only when stdout is a terminal
• ColorMode::Always forces styling on even when stdout is not a terminal
• ColorMode::Never disables styling completely

The NO_COLOR environment variable disables styling in Auto and Always.

use colored_text::{ColorMode, Colorize, ColorizeConfig};

ColorizeConfig::set_color_mode(ColorMode::Always);
println!("{}", "Always colored".red());

ColorizeConfig::set_color_mode(ColorMode::Never);
println!("{}", "Never colored".red());

When you need Auto mode to follow a destination other than stdout, use StyledText::render with a RenderTarget.

Note

Colors and styles are implemented using ANSI escape codes, which are supported by most modern terminals. If your terminal does not support ANSI escape codes, or if color output is disabled by policy, the text is displayed without styling.

Structs

ColorizeConfig

Configuration for controlling runtime color behavior.

StyledText

A styled text value that composes colors and text attributes before render.

Enums

ColorMode

Runtime color policy for rendered output.

RenderTarget

Output target used when rendering styled text explicitly.

Traits

Colorize

Trait for turning values into styled terminal text.