How to reload screenrc without restarting screen

Screen always sets TERM to "screen" by default. Nevertheless, you should realize that a TERM=screen still supports colors.

I tested adding "term screen-256color" to my ~/.screenrc and it does set the TERM to "screen-256color" for me (Screen version 4.00.03 (FAU) 23-Oct-06). Is it possible that screen is looking in the wrong place for your .screenrc file?

You can also try launching screen as follows:

screen -T screen-256color

See if that works.

Have a look at reptyr, which does exactly that. The github page has all the information.

reptyr - A tool for "re-ptying" programs.

reptyr is a utility for taking an existing running program and attaching it to a new terminal. Started a long-running process over ssh, but have to leave and don't want to interrupt it? Just start a screen, use reptyr to grab it, and then kill the ssh session and head on home.

USAGE

reptyr PID

"reptyr PID" will grab the process with id PID and attach it to your current terminal.

After attaching, the process will take input from and write output to the new terminal, including ^C and ^Z. (Unfortunately, if you background it, you will still have to run "bg" or "fg" in the old terminal. This is likely impossible to fix in a reasonable way without patching your shell.)