true colour terminal
also: truecolor, 24-bit color, RGB color, 16.7 million color
A terminal emulator that supports displaying 24-bit color (16.7 million colors) instead of the legacy 256-color or 16-color palettes, enabling true RGB color reproduction.
A true colour terminal (also called truecolor or 24-bit color) displays colors using three 8-bit channels—red, green, and blue—allowing 224 (16,777,216) distinct colors. This contrasts with older 256-color terminals that used indexed color palettes or 16-color terminals with fixed basic colors.
Modern terminal emulators like xterm, gnome-terminal, kitty, and alacritty support true colour. Applications can request specific RGB colors using ANSI escape sequences like \033[38;2;255;0;0m (bright red) or \033[48;2;0;255;0m (green background).
True colour is essential for rich text editors (vim, neovim with color themes), syntax highlighters, image viewers, and any application requiring precise color representation. You can test support by checking the COLORTERM environment variable—if it's set to truecolor or 24bit, your terminal supports 24-bit color.